Different Than Them
by jessa-beth
Summary: Remus Lupin has always been different. This is a Marauders tale, and a coming of age story following Remus through all his years at Hogwarts, and exploring how he dealt with being so different. This story will probably will never be finished, I'm afraid.
1. Disappointment

**A/N:** This is chapter one, and I know it's a bit boring, but I felt it necessary. It seemed a necessary introduction to the story of Remus' life.

Next chapter: Remus is eleven. The debate of whether or not he can go to school.

* * *

Mother and father were always cautious when it came to my life. They were scared to let me be social. I was always a fairly quiet little boy, but when I was about five, this… this thing happened to me, and my parents never let me forget it, making me even shier and more withdrawn than ever. If I wanted to go out and play with the other boys my age, they would exchange terrified glances and whisper in worried tones to one another, before consulting me, and telling me that it would be safer if I didn't. I would whine, as any normal child would, and ask why, but their response was always the same: "Remus, we're only trying to protect you. We're saving you from too much of a let down." But still, as a child, I didn't understand.

My parents contemplated not even letting me go to school when I got old enough. I was only six, and they had already decided that I couldn't go. I was a very studious child, however, and wanted an education terribly so. I dreamt of one. I dreamt of school, and friends, and love from other people that were not my parents. I think I wanted it because I could not have it. I was sure I could never have a normal life because of my terrible condition, and so I yearned to have one. My happy place when I got angry was myself in school… any school… surrounded by loyal friends.

At last, after many years of life like this, my mother let me actually go to the playground. It was really the source of my realization that my parents are right. I finally understood it all, after this incident, not that I ever gave up my dream of being normal and going to school.

My mother took me to the playground as a treat the day before the full moon, to cheer me up, as I was feeling particularly terrible. She actually sympathized for once, and did something kind.

I skipped several feet in front of her, so proud of my first time with other children. I was beaming, despite how sickly and weak I was feeling. My insides were churning, my face was pale, and my eyes sunken, but my heart was full and excited. It was a huge moment for me, as my first time socializing.

Looking around, it was absolutely mind-blowing. Several other kids just like me—who looked like me, and talked like me, and moved like me—were all playing and laughing normally, happily, joyously climbing on monkey bars, and some playing with some miniature broomsticks that flew in set patterns about the playground. I stepped up to a boy who looked about my age, and with a burst of nervousness, but full of confidence, I said "Hi!" It was nothing but a word, but it was everything to me. To speak to people… to interact with them like I was… like I was normal… it was unbelievable to me, being raised like I was abnormal, and should be ostracized. But I wasn't.

He grinned at me, and said "Hello! What's your name?" I was so happy I could have cried. I had never realized how not different I was from everyone. I had eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, and a body like theirs… They looked at me with smiles on their faces, or looked over me completely. They could see nothing different about me, which deeply surprised me, as I had been sure, from the way my parents acted, that I was so different that everyone would immediately run away from me, and hate me because I was so different. I thought that must mean it was obvious, what I was, even on my physical appearance. It was good to know I looked human.

"I'm Remus," I said, the way children do when they're excited to make a new friend. "Who're you?"

"I'm Thomas," he said. "Do you like Quidditch?"

All thoughts of possibly being different were then wiped from my head, as I then acted my age. "Oh yeah!" I told Thomas with excitement, "I love it! My mummy and daddy like it lots, so I hear about games from them!"

We talked on, and several other boys joined in our conversation about games they'd seen. I was in awe of the rest, who had all seen at least one live Quidditch match in their lifetimes. I had only heard of outcomes of matches through my parents, who were fans.

A boy who was rather short asked me, "Why haven't you ever been to any Quidditch games? They're so cool!" I shrugged, unsure whether or not to tell them.

"Yeah, and I've never seen you here before either," said another. "How come you've never been here before?"

I shrugged again. I really didn't seem any harm in me telling them, because they seemed like they could be friends. They were really nice, and I liked them very much, and as I had never had friends before in my life, I was eager to make some. But then, if I told them, my mother would certainly be very angry. She, for some reason, took my condition a lot more seriously than I did. It wasn't such a big deal. It just made me sick once a month. I didn't understand what it was, really.

"Well," I said, deciding on just telling a small bit of the truth, "my parents don't like me to go out very much."

"How come?" asked Thomas, the first boy of the group that I had met.

I really wanted to tell them… I wanted a reaction… I wanted to see what the fuss was all about… wanted to prove my mummy wrong, make her see that no one really cares…

"Well," I said again, finding it a useful way to begin sentences that I was unsure about saying, "she thinks it's dangerous because I'm a werewolf."

Silence flooded the group. A few other little boys around us looked over to where I stood, and shuffled quickly away.

"Ew!" One boy shouted. "You're a werewolf? That's nasty! Ew, get away from me, freak!"

"Mummy, there's a werewolf talking to me!" screamed another in fright.

I didn't understand it. Within moments the park was in chaos. Parents were running about, scooping up their children into their arms, giving me dirty looks, and hurrying out of the playground. Thomas said nothing but gave me a look of pure disgust, as though he'd just been enjoying playing with a little stone, and then discovered it was covered in maggots. His expression bore into me, for the few seconds that he stared, and then he ran, at breakneck speed to his father, who grabbed his hand and pulled him away.

The looks, the stares, the insults… they cut into me like a terrible blade of realization. It was my first glimpse at how my life was going to be.

The last mother out of the park was holding her child very tightly to her, and shouted at my mother for a long while, words that I didn't hear, for my head was spinning too fast for me to comprehend anything. I took a breath, however, and caught the last few words she said furiously, before storming off: "Why don't you just take that beast you call a son away from here, and don't bring it near our children again!"

I began to cry in the ringing silence of the playground. Only six, my limbs were very delicate, and I fell to my knees, scraping and bruising them quite badly. Chalk smeared my skin and pants, but I didn't care. I was hurt, and alone. It was my first experience of true loneliness, and true hurt. I finally understood the let down that my parents were trying to protect me from, but this experience, if anything, as well as finally understanding my situation, made me even more determined to go to school when I was eleven. I needed something to prove my normality. With the many people that there were at Hogwarts, I wanted to go, so that I might meet at least a single person who could accept me. As impossible as it seemed, it was all I wanted. It was all I dreamed of, it was all that kept me going for the next five years, and it was all I thought about in the days of sickness that lead to the full moon, and my change.


	2. Eleven

**A/N:** Here's chapter two. I'm getting quite into this. Chapter three will probably be on its way soon. :) I'm quite enjoying writing Remus' life. It's cute. Enjoy!

* * *

What am I? I spent hours at a time—more than a few hours every day—sitting on my bed, staring out to our tiny back yard where I had been bitten, going over this question in my head: What am I? Am I even human? Why should I not be treated like I am human? I was human, at one point… I know I was… even if it was over five years ago. Now ten years old, almost eleven, I was becoming strangely thoughtful for my age, and unusually determined to read. I had read every book in my parents' house, and bored them senseless by listing all the useless facts I had learned from all the old textbooks they kept around from their Hogwarts days. 

Every time I began to spew the information happily to them, my parents would exchange knowing looks. I usually ignored it, thinking they were just impressed with my ability to obtain such information. Then one evening, I was telling my mother about this thing I had just heard about called an Invisibility Cloak. I found it amazing, and I went on and on about it to my parents. It wasn't anything I knew I could have learned about in school, for I had only heard of it in a short novel about a trouble making little girl who snuck around after dark. But as I talked, my mother interrupted me.

"Remus," she said seriously. "I can tell you like to read, and you like to learn…"

"Yes," I said. "Very much. I want to go to school."

"But Remus," she told me, a twisted expression of regret on her sympathetic face, "You're not… schools don't want…" she paused, as though searching for the right words so she wouldn't hurt me, but I knew what she was saying. "Schools won't particularly be too pleased to take someone of your condition." She took a breath, and bit her lip, almost afraid to hear my reaction. But I didn't yell, or make a fuss, though inwardly, I wanted to. I was a very oddly self controlled child.

I smiled awkwardly, my eyes wide, my head tilted far upward to glare at my mother face to face. "No, mum," I told her seriously. "I'm going to Hogwarts."

She smiled back at me, but didn't meet my eyes. She patted me encouragingly on the shoulder, and said nervously, "Yes… of course you are, Remus. I believe in you. But, um…" she knelt to my level, and looked at me directly now. "It's almost dark, and we'd better go downstairs to prepare…" Her eyes filled with tears as they did every time she was forced to tell me this each month. I shrugged, looking out the window to the now barely visible sun. My stomach churned, and I could feel my innards burning.

I nodded, tears beginning to well behind my eyes. They stung, but as my mother lifted me with impressive strength, I blinked them back, remembering that no matter what, I would have someone there for me. She took me down to our basement, where my father had installed chains on the brick wall down there. I was ten… ten years old... I was ten years old, and being chained to a wall. It wore me down. The cuffs were loose on my tiny child's wrists, but I knew that when I transformed I wouldn't be able to escape. When I heard the click of the key binding them to me, I sniffed miserably. I crouched there in silence as my mother left me to cower alone, her footsteps echoing terribly in the damp, cold basement. No one went down there anymore. We used it for nothing but my transformations now.

I sat, terribly cold, shivering, for nearly a quarter of an hour, before I felt any difference. An excruciating pain shot through my entire body, and I passed out just as I heard myself screaming in pain, and my heart leapt in terror…

I didn't know where I was. I called uselessly for my mother and father, feeling scared, alone, exposed, and cold. It was with all the strength I had that I opened my eyes. I was barely squinting, but I was seeing red. My eyes were bloodshot, and my lids clearly swollen from tears I didn't remember shedding. I could feel my sore muscles throbbing like I had no skin to protect them, and my bones were stiff and cracking with every slightest movement I made, like I were using them for the very first time.

The world spun as I tried to blink. I felt sick. I knew what had happened, but it wasn't registering. I was too tired, too weak… I had too small a body to harbor such a terrible creature. It was always just too much. I could barely say a word.

A door creaked open from somewhere above me, and I knew a parent was coming down to fetch me. Heavy footsteps came toward me, and soon the strong arms of my father were wrapped kindly around my small form, carrying me up the stairs to my bedroom.

"Happy birthday, son," he told me. Confused, I tried to look up at him, but was unsure whether or not my aim was true. I could have indeed been looking at the ground, for all I was aware. "It's March tenth, Remus. You're eleven," he said quietly. I closed my eyes again, and grunted miserably. I didn't know what else to say. I hadn't a clue it was my birthday. I hadn't been keeping track of the days. I had known it was March, but had no idea that the day before had been the ninth. If I had, I would have realized that today was, indeed, my birthday.

Eleven… I felt like something important was supposed to happen when I turned eleven, but I couldn't remember, my head was pounding too hard. I couldn't think. Every step my father took up a stair seemed to shake my whole world, and make my already aching muscles throb all the more violently. At last, I felt myself being lowered onto something, and the motion made me dizzy, but when I was finally lying on something warm and comforting, I knew I was on my bed. I was still naked, but I was comfortable, so I didn't even care. The pillow was unbelievably inviting after a night of scratching myself to pieces without my own knowledge, and then a short rest on a cold, hard floor. Warm blankets were being pulled over me, and I gave a half nod in thanks, unable to do much else, before I drifted off into a fabulous sleep.

When I awoke, I was feeling better, but my head still throbbed. I slid off my bed with ease, however, rather than being in too much pain to even do so. I could hear my parents having a terribly heated discussion in whispered voices just in the other room. I tiptoed silently to my door to listen at the crack, with surprising stealth for someone of ten… no, _eleven_ years of age.

Pressing my ear to the very small crack between door and wall, I could just hear their conversation. I was unusually bright for my age, otherwise I would not have thought to even bother listening in on a whispered conversation. I wouldn't have cared, otherwise, I'm sure.

"I just…" my father was saying. "…I really don't want him to be disappointed."

"Well, John, there's nothing that we can do," said my mother in a defeated whisper. "We've contacted every Wizarding school he's eligible for in the entire country, as the law requires for people like Remus, and none of them would take him. Even Dumbledore said he'd have to see." She sounded more worried than I had ever heard her. She sounded almost in tears, choked up, as she said, "Remus may really never be able to go to school, and he _so_ wants to…" There was a silence, but I knew my mother was probably to upset to speak any further, and my father was most likely just hugging her, or something of the sort, to comfort her. My heart was sinking, but I continued to listen.

"It's his eleventh birthday," she continued, her words heavy with sorrow and guilt, "and he's going to be let down, with no owl accepting him into a school." I bit my lip. My heart was lower than it had ever been. My bones felt hollow, and my organs twisted into knots. I turned away from the door, leaned against it, and slid down to sit on the rug. Tears were in my eyes. I might really just never go to school… all because of my stupid… condition. It wasn't fair that the whole world had to hate me because I am forced against my will, by the moon, to suffer unbearable pain once a month, and they all act like it's my fault. They blame _me_. They shun me, they don't let me go to school… the one thing I wanted more than anything in my life…

"Bloody hell," my father was suddenly saying, not bothering now to keep his voice low. "Look, Emily, look!" I perked up, listening once more.

"Oh, Merlin's beard! John, it's… it's…" my mother was gasping in disbelief.

The sound of a window being opened and closed was heard, and then, after a few moments, my mother screamed. I couldn't stand it any more…

I swung open my door, and ran to my parents. "Mum, dad, what happened?" I asked excitedly, my words slurring a bit with eagerness.

My mother turned, and in her hand, quite distinct, was a fat letter, addressed in green ink, a large Hogwarts seal keeping it shut.

My heart was lifted once more. I was so overjoyed I couldn't speak, or move. As my father came up behind me and began to shower me with hugs, I felt myself grow red and annoyed, but still my mind was soaring too much for me to really care. I was still staring at my mother in shock, our eyes locked, my mouth hanging open, but hers in a wide, watery, proud smile. With a shuddering breath, she handed me the letter, and with quivering hands, I opened it.

Hogwarts sounded incredible. I could hardly wait to buy all of my school supplies at Diagon Alley. It was incredulous to me that after all my years of waiting, I was finally going to school… I was getting what I wanted… I was going to be a _student_ at _Hogwarts_.

An extra piece of parchment had been shoved inside the envelope, explaining that "Precautions will need to be taken in order to allow for Mr. Lupin's attendance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, for the safety of other children in the presence of a person of his condition." It said that during breakfast on the first morning, I was to visit Madame Pomfrey, who was apparently the school nurse. It stunned me that the headmaster was going to such troubles to let me go to school. The idea that someone could be so considerate and so kind-hearted that he would go against the opinion of the rest of the world about me, just to let me have an education, was so mind-boggling, and I decided that I would be the best student I could possibly be, so that the headmaster would need not regret his decision. I was overjoyed more than I could possibly explain. I was wanted… I was not being shunned anymore. I could go to school… have friends, perhaps… begin a life that consisted of things other than my condition.

My life was really starting, now. I could feel it. It was the first thing in my entire existence that had ever truly felt good. Something, at last, was going right.


	3. Diagon Alley

**A/N:** LOL I laugh at myself right now for having written this at 2 in the morning. If there are a whole lot of mistakes, I do apologize profusely, but it was 2 AM, so do cut me some slack. XD You're perfectly welcome to critisize it, though.

* * *

As the brick wall opened to reveal the twisting streets of Diagon Alley, it all became more real to me. I was actually going to be going to school.

I sped ahead of my mother, who still made sure she could see me. Still, she at least let me, which was nice. I almost immediately found Quality Quidditch Supplies, and ogled over the newest model, the Nimbus 1001. It was the second release in the Nimbus series, the first having been released three years ago, and I had read about it in my father's copy of _Quidditch through the Ages_.

I jumped as I felt my mother's hand on my shoulder. I turned around to her, grinning hopefully, but she just shook her head. "The Cleansweep we have at home is good enough, Remus," she said. I pouted, but she just smiled, and shook her head again.

Stalking off angrily, I heard my mother giggling at me as she followed me down the cobblestone street. I ignored her, knowing my love of Quidditch must have been highly amusing to her. She wasn't as big a fan as I was, though she did indeed love the sport.

Soon enough, I got over it. I wasn't one to dwell on trivial things like that. I very quickly became enthralled with all the many fabulous shops: the books, the supplies, the animals… everything was fantastical to me, and I was in awe.

"Where should we go first, d'you think, Remus?"

I didn't know. It had been several months now since I'd gotten my letter and I had turned eleven. Summer had come, and it was now the very beginning of August. I had spent all that time being excited, just itching for school to come. I would think about Hogwarts even when I was being sick, just before my transformations. It had become something almost unreal to me, too incredible and impossible to actually be happening, and this… standing in Diagon Alley deciding what supplies to buy first for Hogwarts… made it all too real. My mind was spinning.

"Um…" I said, unsure, "a wand, maybe?"

"Okay, Remus, follow me."

* * *

A half an hour later, I was leaving Olivander's with a long, thin box tucked under my arm, in it, my first ever wand. A stupid grin was plastered over my face, so excited by my first purchase. I couldn't think, I was just so happy. Then, suddenly overcome with a hyper attitude that came out of no where, I wanted to go everywhere. "Let's go get my books, mum!" I cried happily, running ahead.

After all my books had been bought, and my mother was carrying a large bag full of the textbooks that she and my father hadn't kept, we headed to the Apothecary.

I nearly ran into a tall blonde boy as I went, and uttered a quick apology before continuing, and nearly trampling a small red headed girl. I didn't even bother to acknowledge her as I sped ahead to the Apothecary.

The Apothecary was the strangest place I'd ever been in. I recognized everything from all the books I'd read, and showed off to my mother by naming every single slimy thing in every one of the jars, proud when she was impressed. Several minutes were wasted admiring some cauldrons, when a couple of boys who looked my age entered, followed by a woman who I assumed was their mother. I excitedly turned to spy on them from behind the cauldron, pretending to still be examining it. Maybe they would be in my year at Hogwarts! Maybe they were potential friends!

"So you're going to be a first year too, huh?" the one with glasses was asking the other. I had assumed the boys were related, because they were only with one adult, but I had been wrong. It seemed that one of them had come alone.

"Yeah," said the other, who was slightly taller, and whose hair was a bit longer than the other's. "I guess we're gonna be in some of the same classes, then."

"That'd be cool, wouldn't it?" said the boy with glasses. "I don't know anyone there yet. Do you?"

"No," the taller boy told him. He looked kind of grumpy, and awkward talking to the glasses-clad boy, as though he had never spoken to someone his own age before. He seemed a bit nervous before saying "Do you know what house you want to be in?"

The boy with the glasses ran his fingers through his hair automatically before saying, "Well, all my family has been in Gryffindor, so I'm hoping for that. What about your family?" he asked. "Has your family been in one particular house?"

The tall boy looked very nervous now, and shifted his eyes away from the other, as though beating himself up for having brought up the subject. "Um, yeah, but I don't remember which one," he said. "I've gotta go, though. I'm gonna go buy my textbooks. Bye, I guess." He stuck out his hand.

"Alright. I'm James by the way," said the shorter boy, taking the other's hand to shake it.

"Sirius," the grumpy looking boy said shortly. "I'll see you in September, then, I suppose." He left.

I wondered vaguely where the boy called Sirius' parents were. I felt a stab of sympathy for him when the thought occurred to me that maybe he was an orphan.

"Remus," called my mother. "What are you doing?" I turned to her, a little dazed, still feeling bad for Sirius. "Bring your list over here, honey, this man has offered to help." She was smiling at me, pointing happily over her shoulder to one of the employees at the Apothecary, who grinned at me with a nod.

I bought my things, finding them with the help of the employee at the shop, and exited the shop. As I passed James on my way out, I caught his eye, and gave him a nervous smile, as he had seemed friendly enough with that other boy, Sirius. He grinned, his face perking up from his state of boredom at buying supplies.

My heart was even more elated then, as we went on to buy my robes.

* * *

The next month was torment, just waiting for September the first. It couldn't possibly come soon enough. The full moon of August was all that much worse because of my nerves and excitement for school. I was so bouncy, all the time, and my parents could hardly stand it, but they, too, were in a fit of excitement as well. They were glad I was going to school like I had wanted, but they were nervous too, as any parents would be about sending me off to school for so long.

The day before it was time, they reminded me over and over again that I could come home for the holidays if I wanted to. I told them I knew, every time they told me, and then they would continue to list every single house and tell me about each of them in turn. They told me they would be proud of me despite whichever house I got into, though Slytherin would be a bit of a stretch for them to accept. Still, they said if I got into Slytherin because of my condition, they'd still love me. I had to assure them I'd be fine, time and time again, and still, they were unbelievably jittery and nervous… they seemed even more nervous than _I_ was on the morning of September first. I actually laughed when my father told me that I didn't have to go if I didn't want to.

"Trust me, dad," I told him seriously, "I want to go." I grinned at them in a grateful way. They were the only support I had, and now I was leaving them… it was going to be a difficult separation, I knew.

He smiled at me, his eyes watering. My mother gave me a bone-crushing hug from behind, before pushing me into my father's arms, and hurrying away to the kitchen, covering her face with her hands. I giggled at her, as my father held out his hand for me to take it. I slipped my palm into his, he put a hand on my trunk, and with a rush of blazing wind and a swirl of dizzying colors, we were quite suddenly in an empty alley way behind King's Cross station. It was a safe place for wizards and witches all over the country to apparate. Several other families with children apparated in behind us, as I followed my father out of the alley way, dragging my trunk. We found a trolley, and placed my trunk within it. I stuck close to my father as he found his way to Platform 9 ¾.

He told me what to do, and I nodded. He clutched my shoulder in a fatherly sort of way, gave me a proud smile, and ran toward the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. I followed.

Within moments, we were staring at a huge scarlet engine, while tons of people scurried about on the platform before us. My heart leapt at the sight of it all. Everything was loud and wild, the way a school should be, and I wasn't even at school yet. My excitement was so much that I couldn't say a word as my father hugged me, and told me he had to leave for work, but he would otherwise be glad to help me onto the train. I could only nod. As he left, I turned back around to simply stare at the gleaming Hogwarts Express in wonder, and idle a bit over how I was going to get my trunk onto the train.

Older students all around me were hugging and laughing, reuniting after a long summer, while parents sobbed, clinging to their younger children. I watched a tall, blonde boy wave at a blonde girl at the other end of the platform, and couldn't help but smile as she squealed and ran at him. He lifted her into the air as she flung herself into his arms, and they kissed. At this, I looked away. It was a little too sweet for my liking.

"Hey, you!" someone was yelling in my general direction. "Hey, dirty-blonde kid!" I turned around in confusion. Was it I that they were calling to?

Indeed, the boy with glasses from the Apothecary in Diagon Alley was waving to me. I had barely met him, and he was looking at me with such relief it was as though I had already made a friend. This certainly raised my spirits considerably. I dragged my trunk over to him.

"Hi," he said happily. "I saw you in the Apothecary at Diagon Alley, didn't I?" I nodded, unable to say much else with the big lump in my throat. "Are you a first year too?" I nodded again. "Excellent!" he said. "I'm James, by the way; James Potter. What's your name?" He stuck out his hand eagerly. I took it.

I had to swallow before I could speak, and I managed to croak out, "Remus." I licked my dry lips before continuing with, "Remus Lupin."

"Well, Remus, it's nice to meet you," James said pompously, grinning widely. When he finally let go of my hand, he asked me if I knew anyone else. I told him I didn't. "Hey, me neither," he said excitedly. "Wanna sit together on the train?"

"Sure!" I exclaimed, the relief quite clear in my voice. I could have jumped for joy. I was already making friends!

We had begun to drag our trunks toward the train, when he suddenly stopped, looking somewhere to his right. "Hey, Sirius!" he was shouting. I looked to where he was waving, and saw the other boy from the Apothecary scurrying away from a severe looking woman, who was clutching the hand of a very angry looking boy who was much younger than we were. I had been wrong to assume he was an orphan, it seemed. Sirius looked quite relieved to see James.

"Hey, James," he said happily. He seemed in a much better mood than he had been that day in Diagon Alley. "Aren't you glad to be going away to Hogwarts finally? Doesn't it just seem unreal?" A dreamy expression crossed his face. Remus was rather taken aback. Sirius had given off a grumpy aura in the Apothecary that day, and now he seemed utterly delighted about leaving; his eyes were bright, and his was face full of color.

"It does, doesn't it?" James said. The three of us were all smiling, and for a moment, I felt like I had already known the two my entire life. "This is Remus, by the way," he introduced me to Sirius. "Sirius, this is Remus." We shook hands, smiling at one another. Sirius looked suddenly very proud.

"Oh, it's so good to already know some people, eh?" Sirius was saying, just as the whistle blew for the train to leave.

"It is," James said, "But we'd better hurry onto the train, I guess. It looks like it's leaving." He was staring at the steam beginning to billow from the front of the train.

"Indeed," Sirius said happily, and dragged his own trunk onto the train before James, who followed, a caged owl perched atop his trunk. I allowed myself a last private grin before dragging my own stuff behind me onto the train and down the hall.

I followed the other two boys into a compartment, and settled myself across from them, just as the train began to move.

I was finally going to Hogwarts.


	4. Friends

**A/N: **Wrote this chapter and the next chapter in the car on the way to and back from my grandparents' house. Woot.

* * *

I was feeling so comfortable, eating all the sweets James and Sirius had bought and shared with me. When we had gobbled nearly all of them down, we sat happily together, and it seemed incredible to me that I had only known these boys for about an hour, or less, and already I felt so close with them.

"So, Remus," Sirius said with a barking laugh, the remnants of his amusement at something James had just said, "you've been oddly quiet this whole train ride." Two pairs of eyes were on me.

"Well, I'm just in awe of everything that's happening," I said honestly. "I can hardly believe I'm actually going to school!"

James laughed. "Why?" He asked curiously. "Are you muggle-born?"

"No," I answered calmly, "I just never thought about it as a reality for me."

"Yeah, I guess I see your point," mused Sirius. "I mean, I never really thought much about the reality of school until just the other day. And now, it's actually happening!"

James nodded in agreement, as did I, but I held my tongue so as not to burst out with "yeah, well, I thought I would never be allowed to go to school ever, because I'm a werewolf!"

"So, what houses do you think you'll be in?" James asked lazily, picking up the very last chocolate frog and stuffing it into his mouth. "I know I've already asked you, Sirius, but you never really answered."

Sirius looked, again, nervous, and suddenly brooding and dark. "All my family has been in Slytherin," he admitted furiously, his voice so dangerously low, that it was almost a growl.

We stared at him in amazement. With all honestly, I never would have guessed it. Sirius was sweet, friendly, not conceited or evil at all. "Well there's no need to stare," he grouched at us, "I'm not like my family." A shiver passed over his face. "It's my ambition to escape them. My stupid brother is taking in all my parents' lies like they're true, and I seem to be the only sane one in my whole stinking family… the only one who's not being an idiot about blood."

"You mean," James gasped, "they hate muggle-borns?" He looked disgusted. "Don't tell me they believe in all that pureblood crap."

"Of course they do," Sirius said with a grimace. "I was raised to believe it too, but their attempts failed, because I'm not stupid enough to be discriminating."

"Wow," I said. "So you don't want to be in Slytherin like them, do you?"

He glared at me, but I knew it wasn't really at me… it was to his family, he had just turned to me to say in a forced calm, "never."

"Well I'm glad," James said cheerfully. "In that case, I don't think you will be. I think if you don't want to be in a certain house, then you won't be. Choices make us who we are, anyway!" He grinned sympathetically at Sirius, who perked up, and smiled back.

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. "Yeah, you're right." He shook his head, as though to rid all thoughts of his family."

"I really hope I'm not in Slytherin, too," I said in a worried undertone.

"Why," James asked suspiciously, "has your family been in Slytherin?"

I shook my head quickly. "No, I just… I just hope I'm not like Sirius and, y'know… different than them…" My heart sank. The feeling of my difference was overbearing, and I felt my stomach clench. "All my family has been in Ravenclaw," I told them.

"Well, mine is a long line of Gryffindors," James said with pride, running his hand over the back of his head, ruffling his jet black hair, which was already an absolute mess.

"Oh," came an excited squeaking voice from the compartment door. We looked around to see a very small, round boy looking at us. He had tiny, watery eyes, full of fear and confusion, but his expression was curious and excited. "Are you discussing houses? D'you mind if I join? I don't know anyone, yet…" he looked down at his squirming hands. "Sorry, I don't mean to intrude…"

"No, no, no," James said dismissively, "Not at all! Come, come, sit down! It's always good to meet new people." He smiled at the boy, who looked relieved, and smiled back, before sitting down.

"So," Sirius said suspiciously to him, "what's your name, eh?" He was squinting at the boy, as thought scrutinizing him for any sign of evil.

The boy, who was sitting beside me, and considerably shorter than me, looked positively terrified of Sirius' piercing glare. "P—P—Peter Pettigrew," he said, shaking.

Sirius laughed his barking laugh, which I came to know was just his way of laughing. "I'm only being annoying, Peter, I apologize." He stuck out his hand in a friendly gesture, and Peter, scratching his forehead embarrassedly, took it to shake. "So, Peter, what house d'you think you'll be in?"

"Well, my whole family comes from Hufflepuff," he said. I stifled a giggle. I knew Hufflepuffs were supposed to be rather weak and pathetic.

James, however, didn't bother to conceal his laugh. "Really?" he asked with an amused chuckle. "Well, you don't really want to be in Hufflepuff, do you?" He raised an eyebrow. Peter shook his head in shame.

"I want to be a Gryffindor," he said.

"As do I!" James exclaimed happily. "Well then, Peter, I'm sure we'll get along quite well, if that's the kind of person you are." He shook Peter's hand just as Sirius had, and Peter looked utterly bewildered, as though he had never been accepted this much in his life. Sirius laughed loudly again, at the stunned expression of Peter's face. I myself couldn't help the small twitching smile that crept over my lips.

"So," James said suddenly, as though deciding something, clapping his hands together, and looking intently at the three of us. "Let me get this straight:" he looked directly at Peter, and said, "Peter Pettigrew," before turning to me and saying, "Remus Lupin," and then shifting in his seat to stare directly at Sirius. "Sirius…" he said. "What's your last name?"

Sirius pouted, and told him "Black," as though he deeply resented it.

"Sirius Black," James repeated. "And I am, of course, James Potter," he said with a laugh, introducing himself to Peter, who smiled. "Well I'm pretty sure we'll be a good group, even if we do end up in different houses."

I felt more elated than I had ever felt in my entire life. It sounds pathetic, it sounds trivial and stupid to anyone else, I am sure of it, but it was so important to me, and I had to hold my breath to stop myself from crying right then and there, out of happiness. Sirius seemed to notice my watery expression, and my face growing pink, and he laughed that barking laugh again. "Oh, look, James, Remus is getting all sentimental!" James laughed too, but I just stuck my tongue out at Sirius, who reached over and patted me on the shoulder. "You're alright, Remus, you're alright." His grin was warm, and I couldn't help the icy sheet that had always hung over my heart melt, as I knew, somehow, that I finally had three people that I could call real friends.

As a little group of girls passed the compartment, I leaned back in my seat, and felt suddenly content with the world, knowing that everything would be alright, and feeling, for the first time in my life, normal.

* * *

The rest of the ride was spent discussing Quidditch. Sirius and James seemed much more interested in the sport than Peter and I, who bonded quickly as we had our own side conversation about animals. Peter, it turned out, was quite an animal person. I told him I always loved animals, but animals had just, for some reason, never particularly liked me, but this wasn't entirely true. I adored animals very much, but dogs and cats and the like had always been terrified of me, being able to sense what I am. As I listened to him talk for a bit about a cat he'd had as a child, I studied his face, not having looked at him properly before. His nose was quite pointed, and had the look of a rodent about him, whereas James and Sirius both had faces of strong, proud people, both of them sporting sharp, handsome features.

When Peter finished his story, we didn't have much else to say, so contented ourselves to listen to James' and Sirius' conversation about Quidditch. I spent the time thinking about my new friends happily, and found myself smiling absent mindedly as I stared at them.

All at once, the train seemed to be slowing. We had all lost track of time, and not realized that in a few minutes, we would all be going to the school. As the train stopped, and a voice instructed us what to do, my stomach dropped. I was suddenly nervous like I had never been before. Terror flooded me as I contemplated how they sorted people into houses. James turned to me as we made our way onto the Hogsmeade station, and told me, "My parents told me that a hat decides what house you get into."

"A hat?" I said in disbelief.

"Yeah," he said excitedly. "It reads your mind, apparently."

This didn't help me. All of a sudden, I was even more nervous than I had been about three seconds ago. I didn't want anyone reading my mind. It would know, then, what I was, and probably refuse to sort me. Or, it would ignore any request of mine to not be in Slytherin, and just put me there anyway.

My nerves clearly showed on my face, for a moment later, Sirius was telling me to not be nervous, though he looked rather green. Peter was unnaturally pale, and sweating, his tiny hands shaking.

It seemed unreal, that in a few minutes, we were all standing in a huge clump around great oak doors that were so magnificent and grand, that they could have been doors to a king's palace. Indeed, the school itself was an enormous castle, its turrets and towers making the building look ominous, and hardly like a school.

A strict looking woman introduced herself as "Professor McGonagall," and told us all to follow her inside. I took a gulp, and after sharing a determined look with my three new friends, followed.

We were led into a small chamber to wait. Dread was chilling me like a cold wind, and my lungs felt too tight to say a word. I didn't dare open my mouth, for fear of being sick, of simply not being able to talk, and just choking on my tongue if I tried. Indeed, the whole room seemed to be thinking along almost the same lines as I, for it was mostly silent. A pretty red headed girl was whispering nervously to another girl, who was patting her on the shoulder as though to comfort her. I didn't know what to do. Too many thoughts were speeding through my mind. There were too many to hear properly, screaming all at the same time, so loudly that I couldn't understand a word of them. My heart was pounding like a beating drum, and I felt like I might very well vomit all over James' pretty black school robes.

And then, my mind seemed to be wiped blank when Professor McGonagall returned, and led us into the great hall, where four long tables stood in rows, people at every space, looking around curiously at the new first years. Many of them weren't paying much attention, talking to one another avidly in whispers about one thing or another. Some of them would point and laugh at first years they knew, who would nervously make a face at their older friend from the line, as we moved up to the platform on which the long, fancy teachers' table stood. Dumbledore's chair in the very center of it was higher and more magnificent than any of the others, and his long white beard sparkled dazzlingly in the light of the floating candles around the room. His gold spectacles glinted in the pale light as well, and his face, though calm and lazy looking, held the air of someone extremely important and knowledgeable. My respect for him was suddenly elevated, just looking at him. As Professor McGonagall stood before us with a long roll of parchment, the entire room fell silent. A stool, upon which sat a very old, raggedy looking hat, was placed beside her, and I stared at it in confusion.

Quite suddenly, a rip near the brim came to life, like a mouth, and began to sing.

When its song was over, the whole hall came alive again with applause, and I joined in anxiously, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. And then, to my horror, much too suddenly, with no preparation, McGonagall was reading names. I could hardly focus on the students' names. All I took in about them was their terrified expression, and their relief as the name of one of the four houses was shouted to the entire hall.

After "Bagman, Ludo," came, at last, "Black, Sirius." He went rigid beside me, but as he began to walk forward, an expression of utter terror upon his face, James reached forward, and patted him on the back, to comfort him. Sirius didn't even look back as he walked to the stool as though he were actually making his way to the gallows, like a convicted murderer, ready to accept his sentence. He sat upon the seat as though it were his thrown, and as the hat was placed upon his head, he began to chew his tongue. He shook his head furiously at one point, his eyes screwed shut. I held my breath, sympathetic and nervous for him, and crossed my fingers beneath the sleeve of my black robes. "Not Slytherin," I prayed silently for him, "please, don't do that to him…" And then…

"Gryffindor!" The hat yelled. I screamed loudly with the rest of the Gryffindors, as well as James and Peter. Had Sirius been sorted into Slytherin, I would have been heart broken for him. That's the thing about me… I get much too involved in other people's feelings, and empathize. As Sirius scurried off to the table decked in scarlet and gold, I turned my head back to the stool to see a girl called Bones take a seat upon the stool after him.

The nervous red-headed girl went after a boy called Edgewood, who had been a Hufflepuff, and I saw, out of the corner of my eye, James run his fingers through his hair again as the girl took her seat, and McGonagall placed the hat on her head. She bit her lip, and after a few moments, the hat bellowed, "Gryffindor," and she scurried over to the Gryffindor table. James, beside me, was clapping quite loudly, his cheeks oddly pink. I grinned at him, and his face went even redder, averting his eyes from me to look back at the girl who was sitting a few seats away from Sirius now.

"Laurence, Jack," was being sorted into Ravenclaw, then "Lewis, Hannah," into Slytherin, "Lowry, Pat," was in Slytherin as well, and then…

"Lupin, Remus."

I hadn't been paying much attention to the names, so hearing my name was rather shocking. I seemed to suddenly have no feeling in my legs, and though I felt James' comforting hand pat my back encouragingly, I couldn't breathe as I pushed between two other frightened looking children, and made my way to the stool beside Professor McGonagall. Sitting down upon it, I could see the entire hall, every pair of eyes upon me, waiting. I could see Sirius grinning hopefully at me, James, still in the group of first years to be sorted, smiling with encouragement, and Peter biting his lip, his little watery eyes quivering as they stared at me. I noticed the tall, blonde boy from Platform 9 ¾ sitting at the Slytherin table, his arm around his blonde girlfriend, who, he noticed now, had a funny look on her face, like she was smelling something rather putrid. I couldn't fight back a twitch of a smile at her amusing expression, as something dark suddenly covered my eyes entirely. I realized then, that it was the brim of the hat, falling over my eyes.

"Hmm..." came a tiny voice. My heart leapt.

"I'm not evil," I thought immediately.

"Well," said the hat's squeaky voice, "That much is obvious to me."

I breathed a sigh of relief, as the hat went on. "A studious mind… a need to prove yourself a human being… mmm… such talent, yes… a good thinker, I see… you'd be an impressive Ravenclaw, now, wouldn't you?" I bit my lip.

"I suppose," I thought. I couldn't keep any thoughts from the hat, and it seemed to know I was thinking about Sirius being in Gryffindor.

"Ah, loyal, eh?" said the hat. "Loyal, and yes, brave, too… clearly brave, that's apparent… You'd make a good Gryffindor, as well, with your friend Sirius… and a boy called James, you're also worried about being in the same house with."

"Yes," I thought eagerly, "Yes, I like the sound of Gryffindor."

"Yes, with your distinct desire to do good in the world…. Why not? Yes, I think it should be… Gryffindor!" The last word was shouted, and it echoed throughout the hall, ringing in my ears. My heart was twisted in terrible knots, but I was relieved more than I have ever been. I could hardly stop grinning as I passed James and Peter to join Sirius at the long Gryffindor table. I squeezed next to him, and he gave me a friendly high five as a girl called Moran took the stool after me.

After quite a few more people had gone, "Pettigrew, Peter" was called up. He looked so white that he could have been one of the ghosts that were floating about the hall. He was squirming in his seat so much that it was shaking, and even I was surprised to hear the hat screaming "Gryffindor," to us all, and the tiny boy rushed over to us, sweating profusely, looking relieved.

"Congratulations non-Hufflepuff," Sirius told him with a laugh, patting him on the back. Peter smiled weakly, and the three of us looked back up as "Potter, James" was indeed the next person to take the stool, and the last of our group of four.

James looked nervous, but strangely confident, and sat, like Sirius, on the stool like he owned it. He rested his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands. Twice, he smiled and nodded, as though the hat were telling him something very funny, and in barely any time at all, in was calling, "Gryffindor!"

Tumultuous applause was roaring from the three of us. Our little group of four was all in Gryffindor. My happiness could not have been matched, as James joined us, and the four of us reunited with high fives, laughter, and grins of silently understood friendship.

When the sorting ceremony was over, and food had appeared and disappeared into our stomachs, we all stood to follow the Prefects up to our common room. And as our group wandered up seven flights of stairs, found our way to the common room and the boys' dormitory, and, feeling content, snuggled into our beds after an extremely draining day, I wondered vaguely if, some day soon, I would be able to tell my newfound friends what I really was.


	5. Classes

I came to discover on my way down to breakfast, that it was very hard to find my way around the castle. I got lost several times as I walked with James, Sirius and Peter down the seven flights of stairs down to the great hall. We found ourselves stopped by doors that just wouldn't let us through, and staircases that changed their positioning while we were walking down them. At one point, Sirius' leg went right through a vanishing stair, and we were there for several minutes trying to get him out, until we finally managed it. We arrived at breakfast dazed and confused, and very late, only managing to get ourselves a bit to eat before people were leaving for their first classes.

Having missed Professor McGonagall handing out the schedules, we were forced to catch her on her way out of the great hall.

"Ah, yes," she said, looking through her stack of papers. "Mr. Black," she said, handing his paper to him. "Mr. Lupin," she nodded to me, eyeing me suspiciously, as she handed me my schedule. I gulped, but decided to ignore the look she gave me, and looked down at my schedule as she gave Peter and James their schedules too. "Yes, and Mr. Lupin," she added after handing James his paper, and we had been about to walk away, "I will need to talk to you."

"Uh, yes, alright." I had entirely forgotten about the necessary precautions that had to be taken because of my condition. My new friends had made me almost forget.

"What for?" James asked, defensively.

"Yeah," Sirius chimed in. "It's the first day; he can't have done anything wrong already, can he?"

I smiled. "It's fine, guys, this was scheduled. I'll see you later," and at that, I followed McGonagall to the teacher's table, where she introduced me to the rather young nurse, Madame Pomfrey, who looked rather grumpy at having been left to wait for me.

"I'm sorry," I told her, "I forgot to come see you."

"That's quite alright," she said. She gave me a funny look, and I knew she was judging me based on my condition. Everyone did.

I averted my eyes as she said a bit sourly, "The full moon is in two weeks, which I'm sure you know, as I'm sure you have been keeping track of the dates." I nodded. She went on, "Well, that evening, right after your last class, you are to come straight to me in the hospital wing, do you understand me?" She spoke cautiously, as though she wasn't entirely sure how she should speak to me. I knew what she must be thinking: On one hand, I was a werewolf, which everyone had been taught as a child, were dangerous and evil. She had been raised the same way, I'm sure. Then again, I was a child, and how could a child be dangerous? I nodded to show I understood.

When I looked back up at her, she actually looked sympathetic. Her eyes were full of grief for me, and she said very quietly, "I'm sorry, Lupin. I really am. No one deserves what you are going through." I didn't know what to say. I decided to keep quiet, and stared blankly at her as she continued, "Anyway, Lupin, if you want to stay in school, it would be advised that you do not tell anyone about your condition. Your teachers already know, of course, for the days you will be out of commission, and too sick to be in classes. You will be excused from those classes without another thought; otherwise it would simply be unfair. Thy have been spoken to, and do not worry, none of them should treat you any differently. At least… I hope they won't." She did look a little worried, though, but it made no difference to me. I was used to being treated differently. I nodded though, to show I understood. "There will be a safe place for you to transform, we had it secretly built over the summer, just for you." She smiled kindly.

"Thank you, Madame Pomfrey."

"It was no problem, Mr. Lupin. You deserve to be here just as much as everyone else does."

"Thank you," I said again, this time with a small smile.

"Thank you for your time, Lupin."

"Now please, Mr. Lupin," said Professor McGonagall sternly, "get to class."

"Oh, yes, I will. Thanks again, Madame Pomfrey," I said quickly to the woman, before nodding to Professor McGonagall, and hurrying off to the first thing on my schedule: Double Potions, with the Slytherins.

* * *

It took me a while to find the classroom in the dungeons, and when I finally did, it turned out I was only just on time. Everyone was taking their seats when I entered, and I scurried to the back of the room with Sirius, James, and Peter. James and Sirius took a table together, while Peter and I took the table beside them. I could see James craning his neck to admire the pretty girl with the red hair, who was sitting up near the front of the room, beside a boy with shoulder-length black hair, with a large nose. She seemed to be trying to keep up conversation, but he was apparently trying to ignore her.

A fat, boisterous man, who seemed to be bouncing as he walked, looking overly excited to start the class, entered the classroom and stood before us looking around at the group as though nothing at all could have thrilled him more than to have us all sitting there. "Well," he called happily, "Welcome, welcome… I'm so glad to have you all here! I am Professor Slughorn, and I hope you are all as excited to be here as I am excited to have you here!" I smiled to myself. Excited, indeed. "I'm sure we're going to have many great minds in this class, yes, I can tell just by looking at you all!" He smiled, his mustache twitching. "In this class, I plan to teach you how to mold yourselves to think like the great potion-makers of the age. Potions can be used for nearly anything, and it is the most precise branch of magic that you will ever learn here at Hogwarts, or anywhere, for that matter, as well as the most incomplete, as the science of creating potions is still in motion. Potion making will be more useful than you may even think in your future. Even now, there are potions still being invented for cures for illnesses and conditions of that sort." I might have been imagining it, but his eyes flitted towards me for the slightest moment. "Now, why don't we start with some quick questions, to see if any of you actually read some of your text books over the summer, hm?"

I straightened up in my seat, while Peter slouched further down, so he was well hidden. I had read the book… all of it.

"Now, who can tell me the definition of a bezoar?" he asked.

I shot my hand into the air at once. I knew what it was, of course! James, Sirius, and Peter looked at me funnily… they seemed to not have known that I was such a studious person.

Two other people in the room had raised their hands as well: the red headed girl, and the black haired boy next to her. It was the girl that Professor Slughorn decided to call on. "Miss… Evans, am I right?" Miss Lily Evans?" James slunk down in his seat, and Sirius was giggling at him.

"Yes, Professor," she said happily. "The bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat. It will save anyone from pretty much any poisons."

"Oh! Well done, Miss Evans!" Slughorn exclaimed wildly. "Five points to Gryffindor! Another question, now: Who here can tell me what Amortentia is? This is actually an unfair question, seeing as it isn't even in your books, but let's see who might know it. The only student to raise his hand was the boy in the front sitting next to Lily Evans.

"Yes, uh… Snape, is it? Mr. Severus Snape?"

"Yes," he said unconcernedly. His voice was almost as oily as his hair looked. "Amortentia is the most powerful love potion in the world, even if no one can actually brew real love." Slughorn looked absolutely delighted as Snape went on with, "Its smell is unique to each person, depending on what attracts them most."

"Perfect!" Slughorn cried. "Perfect! Well done, oh, yes, very well done! Ten points to Slytherin!"

"Thank you, Professor," said Snape, his voice still oily, as though it were stuck that way. He definitely didn't give off the air of being a particularly nice boy, and he did indeed look quite grumpy. Lily Evans was beaming at him, and he looked at her, clearly proud of himself, as though he had only answered the question to prove he could answer something harder than the question she'd answered. She didn't seem to notice however, and only looked impressed, just like everyone else in the class. James scowled at him, I could see, and I fought the urge to laugh as his obvious attraction to this girl Lily showed in his feelings toward this boy he didn't even know, just because he was sitting next to her.

"Yes, well, that was very good. Another question now… Who here would be able to tell me the other name for the plant known as Wolfsbane?"

* * *

When we left Potions, Sirius was laughing, and James, moping. Sirius turned to me. "Did you see James mooning over that girl Evans, Remus?"

"Yes, I did," I told him with an amused smile and a glance at James.

"Wasn't his expression when that git Snape got the answer just hilarious?"

"Shut it, Sirius," James mumbled.

Peter appeared at my elbow, asking what class we had next.

Transfiguration, we were all sure, was probably going to be the most complicated of all the subjects, with Professor McGonagall as the teacher, who we had heard from many was the strictest of all. We all had to encourage James to sit next to Lily Evans, for he, despite coming off as extremely confident, was too shy to do it. When we entered the classroom, James was being so stubborn that Sirius had to push him at her table, and sat beside me at the table next to them. Peter was left alone, and no one came to sit with him. We looked at him apologetically, but he mouthed that he was fine, as Professor McGonagall entered. The whole room went quiet.

She gave her speech, which was quite like Professor Slughorn's about Potions. She, however, gave the very frightening impression that no one could get away with anything at all. We were very soon put to the task of turning a match into a needle. She informed us, before handing out the matches, that this was how she started out every first year class.

Sirius and I decided mischievously together that we would be silent, and listen to James to our left, to see if he was making any progress. At least he was talking. That was an improvement.

"Hi, I'm James," he was saying. "James Potter, and you are…?"

"Lily Evans," she told him sweetly, eyeing him as though he were bothering her. "Aren't you gonna try to do your work?" She asked in a rather accusatory manner.

"Oh, well… I was thinking of just trying it later," he told her pathetically with an unconcerned shrug.

She shook her head, and went back to her match. "So," he said, and she flinched as he interrupted her work again. She turned back to him in disbelief as he continued with "have all your family been Gryffindors?"

She glared at him. "No," she said flatly. "I'm muggle-born." She turned back to her match once more, and James said a final embarrassed "Oh," before turning to stare at his own match.

Sirius and I giggled. James hadn't a chance.

"James," Sirius told him on our way out of Transfiguration, "you know you haven't got a chance, right?"

He glared at us, but shrugged. "Yeah, I know."

"Eh, cheer up, man," Sirius said helpfully. "I mean, you only just met her, and it's just the first day. There will be other time for girls."

"Yeah," said James, smiling at Sirius. "It's not like I'm set on her, anyway. I don't even know her!"

"Exactly," I said reasonably.

James laughed. "Once more, James Potter the Incredible tries and fails to strike conversation with a female. Once more, it fails!"

"Ah, so this has happened before?" Peter squeaked in amusement.

"Yep," James laughed at himself. "I'm terrible with girls. I always embarrass them, and make them hate me. But whatever," he said, as we made our way to our next class, "it doesn't matter. Either way, my point is, she was too goodie-goodie for my taste. I'm giving up on that one."


	6. The Whomping Willow

**A/N:** Not my best writing, being written at 1:00 AM, after all. Please, if you see any issues with it, or suggestions about how to make it better, pleeeease tell me. I'm unfathomably disappointed in this chapter, but I'll deal with it. So, uh... deal with it. :)

* * *

The next two weeks were the best times of my life so far. James, Sirius, Peter and I had all become unofficially a group of four best friends. As it was the very beginnings of school, I could tell that James and Sirius were not inclined to do anything that could upset the teachers just yet, but I learnt over those two weeks that they were, indeed, quite vicious trouble makers at times. They came up with the quite a few plots to get one over on the caretaker, Mr. Filch, who always seemed to be terrifyingly everywhere, breathing down the necks of anyone who was getting into trouble, always accompanied by his small cat named, for god only knows what reason, Mrs. Norris.

The teachers were great, and all seemed to like me at once. Professor McGonagall, though quite strict, had taken with me early on, when I was the only one in her first year classes to be able to transfigure anything at all. James and Sirius could do it perfectly in the common room, I found, when simply showing off to me that they could do just as well. I wondered, when they showed me this, why the two never bothered to try in classes. Peter, on the other hand, was simply bad at everything. The only words teachers ever spoke to him were those of disappointment or amusement at his failures, or fury at his having blown up a cauldron, or somehow vanishing a feather he had been trying to levitate in Charms class.

It wasn't really until the day of the full moon that anything interesting happened.

It would be lying if I said I was still up to my usual standards that day, but the teachers understood… even if they didn't tell anyone else. Indeed, I spent the entire day snapping at my new friends, and becoming flooded with guilt, that would suddenly vanish with another burst of crankiness and physical soreness. Several times that day, my three friends told me I had better go to the hospital wing, but I told them I planned on going at the end of the day.

"Are you sure, mate?" James asked in concern, as we left Transfiguration for our next class. I nodded in response, unable to say much else, for fear of being sick everywhere. "You look so pale, man, and you're kind of…" he looked at me apologetically. "…sweaty and gross. You really should go to Madame Pomfrey early; you just don't look well at all."

"I'll be fine," I croaked, still determined not to say a word to them about my condition. "I get sick a lot. I'll manage. Besides, it's only one more class to suffer through before I can go, uh… lie down in the hospital wing."

"We can go with you to see Madame Pomfrey," Sirius suggested, "if it would help you."

I was touched by this offer. Still, I had to turn him down. "No, really, I'm… I'm gonna be alright. Don't think another moment on it, really…" I was telling him. Though it was my final word, I felt rather interrupted as that tall blonde boy that I kept seeing about, walked straight up to us, and stopped us in our path.

"Sirius," he said rather politely.

The three of our heads turned to look at Sirius, puzzled, but Sirius took no notice as he nodded curtly, saying, "Lucius. I thought you had graduated."

More close up, I could see the boy called Lucius' features better now. He was a smug looking boy, who seemed to carry around the air that he was better than us. His chillingly blue eyes were staring down Sirius' gray ones as he told him, "Not until next year. I'm a sixth year, had you forgotten?"

"Yes," said Sirius. "I guess I just lost track of how old you were." Sirius, I noticed, had gained a sort of arrogance about his sharp features as he spoke to Lucius. It was the same sort of look he'd had on him back in Diagon Alley: grumpy, haughty, and condescendingly proud.

"Well" said Lucius, "let that be a mark of how little we've been seeing of each other. After all, it was quite a shock to me to find that I didn't know enough about you to suspect you might turn out somewhere other than Slytherin."

"Well, you know me," said Sirius matter-of-factly, with a shrug. "I'm just a wolf amongst the lambs, aren't I?"

I couldn't help laughing internally at this statement, allowing myself a moment to joke about my own condition.

"Clearly," Lucius told Sirius with a small smirk. "Well, I shall run into you again, I expect." The sixteen year old shook the hand of the eleven year old looking rather amused by it, and walked off.

James laughed. "That was an interesting interaction," he commented.

Sirius shrugged, but looked suddenly furious, his hair, as black as his name, that fell so charmingly in his face, was now casting unusually dark shadows across his eyes, making him look dangerous, and menacing. "He's a Malfoy," he told us. "The Malfoys are close family friends with the Blacks. As a matter of fact, his girlfriend, Narcissa, is my cousin. Her sister, Andromeda, is the only sane one, aside from me, in our entire family, I swear to you. I can hardly stand a single person in the rest of the entire stinking family."

"Like you said," I managed to say hoarsely, "you're just a wolf among the lambs." I allowed myself another inside joke that no one else would find funny, unless they had known what I was. I had a rather skewed sense of humor during this time of the month.

"Yeah," said Sirius with much malice in his voice. "Yeah, well… let's just get to class and forget about the Blacks. Forget I'm even one of them, alright? Let's go…"

And so we went, but the whole of History of Magic, I couldn't get my mind off of Sirius and his family. I tried to imagine what it would be like to hate my family like he hates his, but I couldn't. My family was always so wonderfully supportive.

As it was nearing the end of the class, however, all thoughts of Sirius, or of anyone or anything but my own soreness as a matter of fact, were driven out of my mind. I was simply in too much pain to have any room in my head for much else. I was doubled over at my desk, sweating, shaking, and nearly ready to faint. Professor Binns, of course, didn't take any notice, because he was too busy droning uselessly. When the bell rang, I dashed out the classroom like a terrified animal. I didn't bother to say goodbye to my friends. I limped as I ran, but I ran all the same. I ran… ran all the way up to the hospital wing before I allowed myself to collapse upon an empty bed just inside the door. The whole time, everything felt like a blur. I hardly noticed Madame Pomfrey rush toward me, as I panted on the bed. I could never remember the pain being quite this searing before… it had never before hurt so much, but I didn't have the time to think what could be causing such horrible pain. My mind couldn't focus on it… Madame Pomfrey was suddenly helping me to my feet, and leading me out of the hospital wing again. I very quickly wished I was back on that comfortable white bed, asleep and happy, but that was not an option tonight. Tonight was to be sleepless, and painful.

The castle hallways seemed to be endless as we limped along them. Nearing the entrance hall seemed like it would never happen… it felt like hours, though it was only minutes that it took us to exit the castle.

At last, the great oak doors were opening before us, and we were leaving the castle. The long walk down to wherever it was that she was taking me seemed also to take forever. I noticed vaguely that it wasn't even dark out yet, and wondered, somewhere in the small part of my brain that could think, why I was already feeling the effects of the moon, if it wasn't even dark. But I couldn't come up with an answer, no. I was too tired, too sore… I couldn't think.

"There," Madame Pomfrey said stiffly, though rather sympathetically. "You see the knot on the tree, there?"

I looked up. We were standing beside a wild, ominous looking tree, whose thick branches gave me an eerie prickle on the back of my neck. But yes, there was a single knot near the base of the tree. Not knowing what this was all about, I nodded.

"Well," she said, "this tree is called the Whomping Willow. Get too close to it, and you could get seriously hurt." I began to wonder why she was showing me this tree… was she about to let me get murdered by a tree, just because of what I was? My stomach lurched at that thought… had it all been a plot to kill me? Did they just want another werewolf dead? My chest was burning… it wasn't fair… I was only eleven years old, how could they…?

"If you touch the knot of the tree," she went on, "the tree will no longer become dangerous. There is an opening between those roots there that, if you go through it, will bring you to a long passage leading to a safe house, where you can transform."

I said nothing. My insides ached with guilt at having assumed she was plotting my murder, as well as with the approaching moon. I decided not to beat myself up over it, though… after all, around this time, I usually became very paranoid, and often had irrational thoughts like that. I watched as Madame Pomfrey took a long stick and prodded the knot. The leaves stopped swaying in the wind. It was frozen, as though someone had merely pressed pause on its existence.

She led me down the hole, and I suddenly found myself standing at the end of a very narrow, underground pathway, with an extremely low ceiling, that twisted on, and on. I couldn't see where it led, and that gave me shivers. It was very cold down here.

Madame Pomfrey glanced nervously at her watch. "I think I really ought to leave you here… it's not…" she looked apologetically at me, but I didn't take it personally when she said, "It's just not safe." I shrugged. "Well, then… I'll be off… just follow the passage, and you'll come to the safe house… I'll come and get you in the morning, before classes begin." She turned, and climbed out through the hole in the ceiling, leaving me quite alone in a dark, unknown passage way. I felt suddenly very nervous, and my paranoia returned. I didn't move for several minutes, just looked around in every direction, trying to understand why I felt so terrified. I had transformed once a month since I was very small… why was tonight feeling so different? My legs ached. My heart was pounding. My body seemed suddenly very real and solid to me as I stood, alone, on unfamiliar territory. I wished I knew the Hogwarts grounds better… maybe then I'd feel less… I don't know. I just wish I knew the area better. The fact that I didn't made me feel like I was more alone than I was. There were hoards of people up at the castle, all chatting happily as they made their way to their dormitories. I wondered vaguely then if James, Sirius, and Peter were thinking of me. I doubted it. While they were all up there, I was here… away from everyone else… alone…

It was with a burst of sudden pain in my forearms, that I remembered why I was there. I made my way down the passage then, going as quickly as I could, head bent slightly, as my dirty blonde hair almost was brushing the dirty ceiling.

I seemed to be running for hours. My entire body felt on fire. I knew it was starting to get dark… my blood was telling me so as it boiled ferociously in my veins, heating my face and hands. Every bone and muscle in my body was protesting my fast paced movement, but the moon was sending shocks of adrenaline through my body that allowed me to keep going.

At last, after what felt like ages, I came upon the house. It was old looking, with peeling paint and boarded up windows and doors, and nearly everything in it seemed to be moth eaten, and had a rather sad air to it… but then, maybe it was just seeing everything through the eyes of a werewolf on the evening of a full moon that made things seem so sad.

I found a corner to sit in… alone… and wait. I waited for what seemed like forever. My legs grew sore as I sat cross-legged on the splintery floor; my nerves built as the room grew darker. I was digging my nails into the back of my hand, biting my lip, tapping one anxious foot on the ground in terror, and suddenly…

The sky seemed entirely dark, now.

There was a moment… a moment of such silence, that I remember it forever. My first time transforming away from home… it stayed with me. This moment… it was like being under water… everything was suddenly very quiet, and dark, and suffocating.

I dug my nails harder into the flesh of my hand, and began to feel blood gathering beneath them, as, without warning, my insides gave a terrible lurch. My heart felt as though it were tearing along a seam; every bone in my body was cracking, and I was screaming so loudly, I couldn't hear myself. I couldn't hear a thing. I thrashed about, without noticing I had gotten to my feet, the pain so intense that I wasn't paying any attention to the chairs being thrown to the walls in my agony. I clutched the edge of a table as my face began to sear, elongating… the wood in my hands splintered, and it hurt… my hands were bleeding. I screamed… and screamed. I didn't stop.

I threw myself against the wall, crashing into it, falling hard to the floor as I lost all balance, and then…

Everything faded into confusion and pain.

* * *

I only vaguely remember waking up. Everything was very cold. Stifled sunlight found its way onto the floor of the house in thin rays, forcing itself, the way sunlight always does, through the boards that blocked up the windows. My eyelids fluttered as I tried to remember where I was… why I wasn't in my basement, why there weren't chains on my wrists… 

Stunning pain suddenly reminded me. Back rushed all memory of injury… the previous night came flooding back to me in one terrible stirring moment; I had been brought to this house to transform. Last night had been the full moon.

My hands ached, and as I looked at them, I found them to be bleeding. I was lying, naked, on the hard wooden floor, and my back ached. Every bone crunched as I tried to move. There was a horrible gash across my stomach. Red half-moon marks shone on the back of my left hand, and they were still bleeding. Blood was oozing, too, from a nasty cut on my thigh. My hands were so covered in my own blood, that I couldn't understand it. I could taste blood in my mouth, as well, and knew that many of the other marks on my body were from having bitten myself. With a hollow and rather painful sigh, I dragged myself to my feet. Though the world seemed to spin, and my stomach seemed to have been left on the floor when I had gotten up, I didn't fall back down. I leaned against the wall, the wood feeling cool against my bare side.

I looked around. Was I supposed to go back to the school on my own? Naked?

As though it were in answer to my thoughts, there was a knock on the door to the house. "Mr. Lupin? It is I, Madame Pomfrey. Are you decent? May I enter?" I was relieved, but also very embarrassed.

"Er…" I looked down at myself. I was bleeding, and needed tending to, but I was also very naked. "Well… you don't happen to have an extra set of clothes with you, by any chance… do you?" I called to her.

"As a matter of fact, I do," she said. "Don't be alarmed, I am going to shut my eyes, and hand you the clothes, alright?"

Without a moment to prepare myself, the door swung open. There she stood, the strict looking nurse with her eyes shut tight, holding out a bundle of clothes for me to take from her. I limped over, took them, muttered an embarrassed "thanks," and she shut the door.

I changed, but it hurt. I had to put the pants on very gingerly, and decided not to button the shirt at all. The cut on my stomach was pulsing too angrily for me to take any chances with touching it.

After opening the door, and greeting Madame Pomfrey—again, she wore an expression mixed between fear and sympathy—we made our way back through the long, seemingly endless pathway, and back out of the little opening in the Whomping Willow. Madame Pomfrey kept looking at me oddly out of the corner of her eye. I pretended not to notice.

Once out of the secret passage that led to my safe house, and we were back on the school grounds, she turned to me at last. "Mr. Lupin, I wonder if you'll need a day in the hospital wing before you can return to classes."

"Yeah," I said reluctantly. I never did like admitting my pain. "Yeah, I think I will. Thank you." She smiled at me, eyeing my injuries with great sympathy now. The fear was, again, gone from her eyes. The conflicting emotions people felt with me only confused me. Was I to be pitied, or was I to be feared? Why couldn't people make up their minds?

* * *

I spent the day in bed. It was impossibly warm and comfortable to me, my limbs so sore, my flesh scratched and bleeding in several places. I found myself idly wondering if James, Sirius, and Peter would come to visit me. 

My wounds were burning. I had a slash across my face that I hadn't even noticed, and I hoped… hoped to God that my friends wouldn't take much notice of it. "You can heal my cuts, right Madame Pomfrey?" I pleaded hopefully.

"Well," she said in a high, sad voice, as though trying to break something to me gently, "… there really is no cure for werewolf bites… they can't be gotten rid of." She smiled gently. I didn't return it. All I could think to do in my disappointment was close my eyes, and try to sleep.

I couldn't.

I lay awake for hours, tired as I was, as heavy and itching as my eyes felt… I just couldn't find myself drifting off. Indeed, at some point, I heard voices outside the hospital wing: voices I recognized. "Madame Pomfrey," Sirius was asking politely, "is Remus in there? He said he would be, yesterday, when he was feeling ill."

"No, Mr. Black, I'm sorry," said Madame Pomfrey kindly.

"Come off it, Madame Pomfrey," came James' impatient voice. "Listen, we know he's in there! There's no where else he could be. He was ill, and where else would he go if he was ill?"

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Potter, but either way, I cannot allow you into the infirmary at this time."

"Why not?" Peter squeaked angrily. "He's our friend! We want to visit him!"

"Mr. Pettigrew," Madame Pomfrey said, clearly annoyed, her voice obvious with frustration, "This is my hospital wing, and what I say goes, so please, move along!"

Simultaneously, I was touched by the kind words of my friends, and grateful to Madame Pomfrey for not letting them in, as I heard them stalking away muttering loud words of annoyance. I smiled silently to myself as their footsteps eventually faded away, and very soon, I was finally falling into a blissful, long awaited sleep.


	7. Kidnappings and Cowards

**A/N:** Chapter 7! Yay! Okay, some notes on this chapter. I just love Sirius, and wanted to include some more Sirius Black family angst, so I couldn't help myself in that department. As for the whole end bit with Madame Hooch... well, I guess Harry's not the only one who had a very interesting first flying lesson. :) And notice my use of the word sniveling in the last paragraph? I was just sorta wondering where Snape got his highly amusing nickname.

And who do YOU think would be out there "kidnapping" good people, hmm?

* * *

"Remus, man, what happened to your face?" Sirius asked with extreme concern prominent in his voice, hurrying up to me when I entered the Gryffindor common room early the next morning. Not knowing what to say, I had to make something up:

"I, uh… I tripped."

"Why didn't Madame Pomfrey heal it when you were in the hospital wing?" James questioned suspiciously.

I opened my mouth to quickly make up an answer, but nothing came to me, so I closed it again, and shrugged.

"What, you don't know?" James asked.

"Well, I didn't notice it was there, and when Madame Pomfrey asked me if I wanted her to heal it, I said no, 'cause it didn't hurt, and I hadn't even noticed it was there," I told him quickly.

"You got that big cut from just _tripping_?" Peter asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Big cut? Why, is it really so big?" It was true: I hadn't actually seen it, yet.

Sirius laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Go see for yourself in the mirror upstairs."

I made my way up the stairs to the boy's dormitory, James, Sirius, and Peter following, and glanced at myself in the mirror. It _was_ worse than I had thought.

When I transformed at home, since I hadn't had much space to do so, my parents had been forced to chain me up, and I couldn't really attack myself with cuffs around my wrists and ankles. But now, without the restraints, I was covered in scratches and bites. I felt freer than I had when I had been forced to transform in chains, but I also was more bloodied up, and looked sicklier. Indeed, the cut on my face was much more than just a cut: a long, red gash ran horizontally across my cheek and over the bridge of my nose. I traced it gingerly with my finger.

"Oh my," I said, staring in awe at my own reflection.

James laughed, "You really ought to be more careful, you know. Tripping can be pretty dangerous!" Sirius and Peter joined in, and I laughed too, blushing heavily.

"Well, I'm just clumsy, y'know." I rubbed the back of my neck in embarrassment, but Peter smiled appreciatively at me.

"So am I!" he piped up. "I'm always bumping into things, dropping things…" he bit his lip.

Sirius roared with laughter then. "Trust me," he said amusedly, "the two of you are nothing compared to my cousin-in-law, Ted. He's a muggle-born, married to my cousin Andromeda, and he's worse than she is, and that's _really_ saying something: she's worse even than you two! If they had kids, I bet they'd be right little slob children!"

Their conversation was ended by Peter's growling stomach reminding them all that it was time for breakfast. "Let's go eat, shall we?" Sirius said, checking his watch.

"I agree," said Peter. "I'm starving: I didn't eat dinner last night, because I had to finish that stupid essay for Potions."

"I didn't eat at all yesterday, and I didn't eat dinner the night before," I said, suddenly realizing how hungry I really was.

James turned to me as we left the dormitory, "Yeah, well you were sick, so you had an excuse. Peter here is just a procrastinator." He laughed.

"Hey, that's not fair," Peter squealed defensively. "None of the rest of you has done that essay yet."

"I did," I said with a small smile. "Why haven't the rest of you?"

"I told you, I did it last night!" said Peter. "It's just _them_ that haven't done it," he said, pointing an accusatory finger at James and Sirius.

"We were gonna do it last night," said James, "but we forgot."

"Yeah, and the night before, we just didn't wanna do it, because…" Sirius paused to think. "Well, because it was a full moon!" He suddenly made his voice deep, and dramatic. "We were possessed not to do it by the power of the _moon_!" He, James, and Peter dissolved into amused laughter. I didn't.

"Yeah," James agreed. "You all know the power the full moon can have on people!" he laughed wildly still.

I kept silent as we made our way down to the great hall. I was slightly offended by their talk of the full moon, feeling almost as though they were mocking me, but then, I reasoned, they couldn't possibly know what I was, so I was just being silly.

A tall, blonde, Slytherin girl passed our table at breakfast, and I recognized her as Lucius Malfoy's girlfriend. It was with this that I remembered Sirius' family situation that had been on my mind the other day, and the fact that she was his cousin flew to the front of my thoughts. I glanced at Sirius, and back at the blonde girl, trying to spot some sort of resemblance, but could find nothing. Perhaps Sirius really was the "wolf among the lambs" in his family. But then I remembered his mother and brother I had seen on Platform 9 ¾, and thought they had looked quite an awful lot like Sirius, with their black hair and pointed features, so handsome and arrogant. I supposed that arrogance was shared amongst their family, with their distinctly pointed brows, and their sharp chins, now that I looked a second time.

"Y'know, Sirius, you really don't look anything like your cousin." I couldn't help myself. I knew by now that Sirius didn't like talk about his family, but after the past two weeks of his avoidance of the subject, and after the short encounter with Lucius a couple of days ago, I had just become too curious. Sirius scratched his head in annoyance, and looked around at his cousin.

"Who, Narcissa? Yeah, well, she doesn't look much like the rest of the family. It's her mother, I swear, had something in her genes that made her children lose the trademark Black hair. She's the only blonde in the whole family, and her sister Andromeda, the only one with light brown hair. Their other sister Bellatrix, though, who graduated Hogwarts this June…" he laughed. "She's the image of my mother." He smiled, and looked off into space as though reminiscing about something fairly interesting, but his smile turned into something of a grimace, and I was suddenly sorry I'd mentioned it.

I shook my head. "It doesn't matter," I told him. "I'm sorry I mentioned it."

He shrugged, and went back to eating, but I continued to watch Narcissa as she made her way to the Slytherin table.

I watched her take a seat beside her similarly blonde boyfriend, Lucius, who I saw was sitting next to the oily haired boy in our year, Severus Snape.

Two weeks of classes with him had taught me that he was not someone to be crossed. He was snide, vicious, and quite mean. James had already gotten into a very long quarrel with him over who had been sitting in a seat first, which had nearly resulted in wands being drawn, but instead, because Professor Slughorn had approached, James had stalked off, with nothing else to say. Snape was stubborn, and was clever with words, and those qualities are difficult to beat in an argument. By now, James was just looking for _any_ excuse to jinx him.

He was also, the four of us had discovered, extremely good in potions. Professor Slughorn seemed to have taken a particular liking to him because of his incredibly natural talent. Even I was highly jealous of him, despite how little I liked the boy.

With a curled lip of disgust, I said "That Snape boy is quite unpleasant, isn't he?"

"You say it like it's a question," James confirmed with a laugh. "Donno what it is about him, but he just makes me mad." He narrowed his angry eyes as he looked over at Snape at the Slytherin table.

Peter snorted in disgust. "Maybe because he's a know-it-all and a show off, and an annoying prat who thinks he's better than us," he said. "Which he's not," he added furiously.

"Of course he's not," Sirius fumed. "He's a slimy git, and I don't like him at all." He crossed his arms, as though this settled the matter.

"Excuse me," came a girl's voice to Sirius' left. It was Lily Evans, the red headed girl that James had been quite taken with. None of us had noticed her sitting there. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help overhearing your conversation about Severus, and I must say, I think you're quite rude to talk about him like that."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," said Sirius haughtily, "but that's really none of your business."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Actually, Black, it is my business, seeing as you are talking about one of my friends behind his back."

"That git is really your friend?" James blurted out, leaning over Sirius to ask her directly.

Lily looked pointedly at him. "Yes," she said matter-of-factly. "Yes, he is, and I'd prefer it if you didn't speak so rudely of him if you don't know him."

I knew where this was headed as James opened his mouth to say something else rude, and cut him off by quickly saying "We're sorry, really, and you're right. We shouldn't judge and speak ill of those we don't know yet. We won't do it again." I nodded politely at her, and she nodded back with a small, satisfied smile. She glared once at James and Sirius before picking up her schoolbag and heading off early to her first class of the day.

Turning back to my friends, I found that they were staring at me with a mixture of awe and frustration. "What?"

"What did you do _that_ for, eh, Remus?" James cried.

"Did I do something wrong?" I asked politely, raising an eyebrow as I helped myself to more bacon.

"Yes!" Sirius said in disbelief. "Well, no, but how can you just let her defend that slime ball? He's a _Slytherin_, for crying out loud!"

I shrugged. "Maybe so, but she did have a point, Sirius," I told him. "We don't really know him, do we? I mean… for all we know, he has his good aspects… even if they might be difficult to see plainly." I stole a look over at Snape, who was now getting up to join Lily Evans on her way out of the great hall. I watched him give her a short bow, and hold the door for her as they exited. "You see?" I stated, gesturing to this strange sight. "He's polite."

"Only to her," James sneered through gritted teeth, looking plainly furious at this.

Peter giggled. Indeed, the rest of us began to laugh at James' red face as well: we could all tell even better than James could, that he was attracted to Lily Evans. He wasn't the only one, though. Many of the other first year boys would easily admit their attraction for her. At least, the Gryffindor boys would. James, Sirius, Peter and I didn't really know the boys in the other houses very well yet.

The bell rang then, for the start of classes, and the four of us were forced to leave our plates to get to our morning classes.

* * *

The morning was more boring than usual, I thought, as all we had were Herbology, History of Magic, and Charms, which, I had found, was not at all my area of expertise. By the time it was lunch, I was bored nearly to tears. I had gotten several bites on my already sore hands from a plant that I still couldn't remember the name of, fallen asleep to Binns' droning voice, and not managed at all to enlarge my button with the Engorgement Charm we were learning. It was clearly not my day, and I told the others this, once we'd found our way back to the common room after lunch, and flopped onto a couch. 

"Cheer up, mate," James said happily, slapping me cheerfully on the back. "Things'll get better! After all, we've got a flying lesson this afternoon!" He seemed utterly ecstatic at this. I looked oddly at him.

"We do?"

Sirius appeared at my shoulder. "Yeah, Remus, remember? There was a notice in the common room just yesterday, telling us."

"I was sick yesterday, Sirius."

"Oh, yeah," Sirius said, looking slightly guilty.

"I'm no good at flying," Peter said nervously. "I tried out my dad's old broom once, and I just can't get the hang of it!"

I smiled at him. "You'll do fine, I'm sure." I then turned back to James, who was still looking incurably excited. "Who's teaching us?"

James looked back at me, apparently reluctantly pulling himself out of flying fantasies in his mind. "Well, I heard from some older students that Madame Hooch teaches us. She's alright, they said, but apparently…" he lowered his voice, and we all leaned forward out of curiosity at his sudden seriousness. "Her brother's gone missing. Flying lessons usually take place a few days earlier in the term than this, but her brother went missing at the end of our first week, and Dumbledore let her take some time off."

A dark silence followed this. Sirius looked dizzy and confused, while Peter just looked absolutely terrified. I couldn't say what my face was conveying at the time, but I was certainly feeling sympathetic. I didn't know what to say to this statement.

James sat back, looking sad. "Yeah… and he's not the only one. There was another disappearance about a month ago, but I don't know who it was."

Sirius was looking suddenly dark. "My parents knew," he said viciously.

"What?" I asked, shocked, turning to him.

"They _knew_, and they didn't tell me. They _never_ tell me about what's going on in the world. I heard them talking a month or so ago… they seemed to think the guy who disappeared had it coming."

James looked disgusted. "I don't know who he was, but I don't think he did! My mother was telling my dad… the guy was apparently a friend of theirs! He was a good man, putting loads of people who practiced the dark arts in Azkaban."

"So then," Peter squeaked, his voice trembling, "who'd go around kidnapping good people?"

Sirius crossed his arms, and shifted uncomfortably. "Who's to say they've been kidnapped?" he spat furiously. "Maybe they're _dead_."

There was a very pregnant silence between us at this frightening pronouncement, before James gave a sudden, awkward cough, and said, "Well… come on, let's just go down to the Quidditch field, shall we?"

* * *

Once on the field, Madame Hooch shouted at us to go stand by a broom. We hurried to do as she asked, as we were sure she must be quite touchy now. Indeed, I noticed that there seemed to be bags beneath her rather bloodshot eyes, which looked as though they could have been severe and hawk-like had they not been so tired and sad. The woman ran a hand sadly through her hair, and looked up at the cloudy sky. I couldn't help wondering what she must be thinking. 

We had been early, and as more people began to arrive, I noticed Rodolphus Lestrange from Slytherin nod curtly to Sirius as he passed, and Sirius return the nod with a scowl. He looked very grumpy after that.

It was quite chilly for a September afternoon, and I began to wish Madame Hooch would hurry up with the lesson, because my toes were beginning to get cold in the wet grass.

"Alright, everyone pay attention, please," Madame Hooch suddenly barked. I looked up at her quickly. I saw James practically bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. "I am here to teach you the basics of flying, despite the fact that first year students are not allowed on their house teams. Still, it is a good thing to know, basic flying, and it will help you next year or in any future years if you would like to try to get a space on your teams." I glanced at James, who was biting his lip, trying not to look too eager. I couldn't help smiling at this.

Madame Hooch went on. "It's rather cloudy and wet today, but I think we'll be okay, so… let's get started. I'd like you all to stand beside your brooms on the left side… very good, thank you. Now, put your right hand out, over your brooms, and command: '_up_!' Try… now."

"_Up_!" came the varied cries of students as they attempted to command their broomsticks. The broom I had chosen didn't move at all. It didn't even quiver. Frowning, I looked to my right, to see Lily glaring at her broom as it hovered for a few moments about an inch above the ground, and then flop back down on the grass. She looked furious. To my left, James' broom had flown into his hand at once. He looked so giddy it was disgusting, but highly amusing, still. Beside him, Sirius' broom was in his hand as well, but it seemed to have sped there so quickly that it had nearly knocked him off his feet. He seemed to be trying to stay balanced. I was gleeful to find that at least Severus Snape's broom had not moved at all for him, either. Peter's broom hadn't either, though, and the expression on his face was enough to make anyone laugh.

"When you've all got your brooms," Madame Hooch cried over the continuous mutterings of '_Up_!' from students, "I want you all to mount it." I quickly bent to retrieve my still immobile broom from the ground as she showed us the proper way to mount our brooms.

My heart tightened nervously when she told us to kick up into the air on her whistle. I wasn't liking this lesson much. I was probably not a very good flyer, and I didn't really want to make a fool of myself in front of the entire Slytherin house, as well as all my friends. But without any more time to worry, there was a whistle blast that nearly knocked me off my broom while I was still on the ground, and with a little nervous yelp, I kicked off. I hovered several feet above the ground, and, looking down, felt sick. I held my breath, and looked straight ahead, but my sight here wasn't much better. I was looking straight into the face of Severus Snape, who had been across from me in the line of Slytherins that had been facing the line of Gryffindors.

"You don't look at all well, Lupin," he snarled. "And who gave you that slash across your face, eh? Did you offend someone with your quiet manner, and were you too much of a _coward_ to stand up to them?" His large, hooked nose looked even stupider as fury built up in my chest. I could do or say nothing, though, or I would almost certainly get in trouble. I could feel my face growing red though, even as Madame Hooch's whistle blew once more, and everyone made their way for the ground. It was not the first time in the past two weeks that Snape had made a snide remark about my shyness. He seemed to take it for cowardice, but I didn't like to think much of it. He didn't know me, and it was unfair of him to make assumptions.

"Don't you call him a coward, Snape," James snapped at him from beside me.

"I'll call anyone a coward who doesn't have the _guts_ to even bother speaking up for himself," Snape retorted coolly.

"Watch it," Sirius hissed from several feet away, leaning across James, "or I might just hex you."

Snape's lip curled in amusement. "You wouldn't dare risk your egotistic head, Black. You'd be expelled in an instant."

"So you wouldn't hex me right back? You too afraid of breaking rules, Snape?" Sirius grinned a twisted grin. "Who's the coward _now_?" And with a nod as though he had ended the matter, he stood straight up again, and looked back at Madame Hooch, who was now instructing how one turns a broom while in the air. James, Sirius, Snape and I weren't paying an ounce of attention, too intent on the small argument taking place among us. Lily Evans suddenly spoke up from my other side.

"Oh, _cut it out_, you lot! If Madame Hooch comes over here…"

"Why don't you just keep your nose out of things that don't concern you?" James snarled, his voice low so as not to be heard, but still full of annoyance.

"If she takes points away from Gryffindor for this…" she said furiously, casting a nervous look at Madame Hooch and then back at James and Sirius.

"Will you _shut up_?" Sirius growled. "Who _cares_ about points?"

"_I _do!" she said angrily.

"Well we don't care what you think," he snapped.

"Don't you talk to her like that, Black," Snape said angrily, pulling out his wand.

"Oh, going to defend her, are you, Snape? Going to jinx me, eh? With what?" Sirius' smirk was taunting Snape horribly, it was clear.

The corner of Snape's mouth twitched as he glared fervently at Sirius. The hatred in his gaze was matched eagerly by Sirius and James' glares right back at him.

"Yeah," James said with a sneer. "That's what I thought, _coward_."

"_Don't you call me a coward_!" Snape hissed furiously.

Just as Snape raised his wand in anger, James whipped out his wand as well, and muttered "_Engorgio_!" before Snape could even speak.

The whole class turned to see what the disturbance was all about, as Snape fell to the ground, clutching his nose, which was swelling to the size of an eggplant. "Mr. Snape!" Madame Hooch cried. "_What is going on over here_?!"

Snape, however, couldn't speak. His nose had gotten so large, that it was impossible for him to open his mouth. He began to splutter and sniffle as the whole class began to laugh. James was rolling around on his back, howling madly, and Sirius was doubled over, cackling as well. Lily Evans, however, looked absolutely furious, and terrified for her git of a friend, and accompanied Snape to the hospital wing when Madame Hooch asked for a volunteer. Peter looked amused, but scared, and I knew it was for the same reasons that I, too, was nervous.

"You shouldn't have done that," I told James, though my face was calm, and appreciative of their defense of me. "You could get in serious trouble."

James took some breaths to calm himself before looking up at me from the ground, and shrugging. He shook his head. "Nah," he said, unconcerned. "No one's gonna get in trouble. Knowing Snape, he'll be too _proud_ to admit that anyone could attack him so easily, with such a simple charm; and as for Lily…" he rubbed the back of his neck as he smiled in amusement. "Well, she's just too scared to lose points to tell on us."

"I suppose," I said, and as my worries subsided, I allowed myself a laugh at Snape as he sniveled loudly on his way across the grounds back to the castle with Lily.


	8. Everybody Loves Quidditch

**A/N:** Just a short chapter to keep this story going. I know it's really short and really useless, but hey, I've gotta to something to keep myself entertained! Lol.

Anyway, hope this is at least entertaining for you, as well! Enjoy!

* * *

The incident with Severus Snape was suddenly known amongst all the first years. Snape was not very well liked, even after just a couple of weeks in school, for most everyone seemed to be aware of what an arrogant, haughty prat the greasy boy was. It was because of this that James and Sirius suddenly became new sorts of heroes to their year. Even the Slytherins seemed to have found it funny, but didn't show it. The first years from all the rest of the houses, however, smiled or laughed proudly whenever they passed James or Sirius in the corridors. It only lasted a few days, but this new, stupid glory seemed to have my two friends just itching for more. James had recently taken up the habit of running his fingers through his hair proudly, whenever he was complimented on something. It had made them very popular in our year, this small incident. Sirius and James had become very liked by almost everyone, now. It helped that they were very social and self-confident people.

One person who had clearly not been amused by James and Sirius' actions showed it by glaring hotly at them from across the common room, and giving them disapproving sniffs.

"Do you _mind_?" James asked Lily one night when she was doing this particularly loudly. It wasn't _really_ disturbing us, but James for some reason felt the need to confront her rudely. "We're trying to study," he told her. "Go be angry at us someplace else… someplace where you aren't distracting us."

She glared at him, looking thoroughly offended, stuffed her books back into her back which she swung furiously over her shoulder, and stalked off to the girls' dormitory.

"Is it necessary for you to be rude to her at every opportunity you find?" I asked him sadly as he returned to his seat, looking pleased with himself.

"Yes, so long as she finds it necessary to be friends with that git, Snape," James said grumpily.

I sighed. "She has every right in the world to be friends with whomever she likes."

"Yeah," said Sirius, "but some people just aren't very good at choosing company, and I think she's one of them."

"You sound like the Slytherins," I told him, rolling my eyes, "with all their talk about pure blood, and dirty blood, and how everyone should only accept their own kind…"

Sirius looked absolutely livid. "I AM NOT LIKE THEM," he shouted.

Peter whimpered. The whole room went suddenly very quiet. The Gryffindors who were still in the common room looked over at the four of us curiously, but when nothing appeared to be interesting, they turned back to their own activities.

I was at a loss for words. I swallowed, staring intently at Sirius, who was panting where he sat as though he had just run a mile. "Sirius, Mate," James said cautiously, "what's up with you?"

"Nothing," he said. "I'm just… I'm not like them, okay? Let's drop it…"

"No, mate," James said determinedly. "Why do you always get so defensive about not being a Slytherin?"

I had a pretty good idea, but then, I supposed, we all did. James, I think, just wanted to hear him say it out loud.

"Look, I just…" Sirius seemed to be struggling to speak. "I just… I don't want to be one of them, okay? I just _really don't_. My whole family is a lot of Slytherins, and they're all full of this crackpot idea about purebloods, too. Several of my uncles and aunts are in Azkaban for torturing muggles, y'know. I don't want to turn out that way. That's all. I just… I'm different than them, and I'm glad, but I guess… I guess I still feel like I need to prove it, sometimes." Sirius shrugged, and turned suddenly scarlet, seeming to think he'd said too much.

James opened his mouth to respond again, but Sirius said, "Look, I'll see you guys tomorrow, alright? I'm heading off to bed." And he left.

I shook my head at James as he turned back to us looking stunned. "Drop it, James," I told him. "It was really stupid of me to say that to him, but now that he's _admitted_ he's got an issue with his family, don't bring it up again unless he does. Trust me; I think he'll be happier that way."

James looked grumpy at this, but said nothing.

* * *

I turned out to be quite right, of course. As September turned smoothly into a chilly October, no one mentioned Sirius' family, nor did he bring it up again, either. 

Quidditch season had begun, and it was hardly difficult to stumble upon James moping that he couldn't be on the Gryffindor team just because he was too young. Indeed, it was quite common. The rest of us were prone to joining him in these moping sessions, simply because of lack of anything else to do. The workload was okay, really, and I was happy to have friends, so I wasn't quick to object when my friends procrastinated by moping, and didn't do their work, which was often.

October's full moon was no better than the one in September. If anything, it was worse. It was harder, now, to lie to my friends, and leave them up at the castle. I was more attached to them than I had been before, and they to me, so when I said I had to go the morning preceding the full moon, telling them I would be away for two days, they were immediately pressing me with questions that I couldn't answer in full.

I told them this time that my mother was ill, and I was going home to visit her, while in truth I was hiding out all day in a wooden shack that was my safe house, growing weaker by the hour until I finally transformed when the sun went down and the moon had risen. I spent the following day, again, in the hospital wing, and returned to my friends happy as ever to see them, though still feeling very weak. Though they squinted suspiciously at me, they took my story as I told it, and didn't mention it again.

* * *

Halloween passed without much to say, but the first Quidditch match of the season (Gryffindor versus Slytherin.) in the very beginning of November was greeted with much excitement. The Gryffindor players, who were all in their fifth and sixth years at Hogwarts, were the center of attention in the common room, and James wasted no time in asking one of the chasers, who was also the captain, about all their moves, trying to decide whether or not he thought they might be too difficult for him when he tried out for the team next year. We laughed openly at James as the tall girl got so fed up with him that she could only escape into the girls' dormitory. 

The morning of the Quidditch match, James, Sirius, Peter and I all fanned up into the stadium with the rest of the school, Peter and I both excited to witness our first ever Quidditch game, live. We watched the form of the young Madame Hooch, who spoke some unheard words to the teams, blow her whistle and the teams take off at once.

The game was incredible. I watched, awed, as speeding bullets of red and green passed the scarlet Quaffle to each other like it was a hot potato. And then, as the first goal was made to the Slytherins, Sirius asked quietly to my left, "Hey, where's Snivellus?"

"Who?" I asked.

"That was me making a play on Severus' awful name, after the way he cried like a baby when James blew up his nose."

"Oh."

"So? Where is he? I know his greasy black head by now," Sirius was snarling under his breath, "and he's definitely not here. There's no reason for him to not be here."

"Maybe he just doesn't like Quidditch," I reasoned, but this didn't suit well with James to Sirius' left.

"Doesn't like Quidditch?" James said as the Slytherins scored again on Gryffindor. "That's impossible. No one doesn't like Quidditch."

"That's not true," Peter piped up from my other side. "I'm not so keen on it, myself."

James rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, well… oh, look! We scored!" We all applauded politely.

Sirius turned back to us. "Still," he said, "I just don't like the fact that Snivellus and Lily Evans both aren't here."

"What?" James spun his head around to look at him so fast, that he appeared to have cricked his neck. "They're both not here?" he asked, disbelieving, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked furiously around the stadiums for either of the two.

"Again," I said, trying to reason with them, "Maybe they just don't enjoy Quidditch quite as much as you two do!"

James ran his fingers angrily through his hair, his oval face going pink. "No, no, I think they're up to something fishy," he said impulsively.

I rolled my eyes. "Like what?" I asked.

"Like, I donno…" Sirius thought. "Maybe they fancied a bit of snogging?" he said finally with a snort of amusement.

All four of us instinctively made retching movements.

When we were back to our senses moments later, getting over that disgusting thought, I said, "Now really, I think you two are just blowing things entirely out of proportion." James was muttering angrily to himself, and Sirius looked like he was just quivering with the possibility of tormenting Snape again. "You can ask Lily what she was up to after the match in the common room, or Snape, the next time you see him. Please, just… leave it alone now," I said, exasperated with the lengths I knew my friends might go to just to catch Snape in the act of doing something wrong.

"Yeah," said James, his arms crossed, and his face red. "Yeah, okay, I'll ask her after the match. And if she was off doing something with Snape…" his words were lost in a roar from the crowds around them as Gryffindor made another goal.

I chuckled to myself at James' obvious crush, and turned back to the game.

* * *

Upon entering the common room when the match was over, James and Sirius directed themselves immediately towards Lily, who was curled on an armchair with a book. Peter and I exchanged exasperated looks as our friends interrogated her. 

"Where were you during the Quidditch game this morning?" James asked the moment he stole the seat across from her. She ignored him. "Evans, I'm talking to you."

She took her time in putting down her book, before finally looking up at him in annoyance. "What is it, James?" She asked, her voice dangerously sweet.

"Where were you during the Quidditch game this morning?" he asked again, irritably crossing his arms as her stared at her.

"Studying," she said defensively, "in the library with Severus. We happen to not like Quidditch much."

"You…" James looked around at me furiously as though this were all _my_ fault, but I could find nothing to do to this except to shrug and smile apologetically. "You're always right," he said grumpily as Lily stalked off to her dormitory to save herself any more useless interrogation.

"Well what did you expect?" I asked, patting James on the back. "I mean, did you really think that Lily would be so much of an idiot as to do something suspicious with Snape? I mean, the two of them are crazy about rules. They wouldn't break a rule if it meant they got a hundred galleons for it anyway," I laughed.

"So, what's your secret, Remus?" Sirius asked, taking a seat beside James.

This was such an unexpected question that I was rendered momentarily speechless. Could he know? Could he… but he couldn't. Was I being paranoid? "I… My… _what_?" I was able to choke out from beneath my heart suddenly throbbing in the back of my throat.

"Your secret!" Sirius said again, completely unconcerned as he put his feet up on James' lap on the couch beside him. "How it is that you always know everything, and always manage to be polite, and are always so calm, and studious, and… everything?" Sirius was laughing now, his loud, barking laugh that I had gotten so used to.

I had to catch my breath. I had been so nervous for a moment there that my palms had begun to sweat. I calmed myself down, wiping my hands on my robes, and said, "Oh… well… I don't know. I don't mean to. I was just… brought up being polite, I suppose. Still, I'm not as good with people as you guys are. You're all social, and confident, and outgoing, and I'm…" I couldn't really think of a word to suit me, and finally decided on: "…different."

"Nah," said Sirius, still grinning admiringly at me, "you're just nicer than we are." He laughed harder, and James soon joined in.

"Yeah," James agreed, "Sirius and I are gits, and you at least know how to be polite. I kind of hope you'll have influence on us." He smiled warmly as they continued to laugh at themselves.

"I hope I don't," I mumbled. They didn't hear me, and for this I was glad. I simply smiled at them, allowing them their thoughts that I was just a nice little boy… that I was innocent and kind, and naturally polite.

The fact was, I had taken up being polite and overly kind and understanding (according to my mother, though I can't see how I am at all.) when I had been rejected by old childhood friends because of what I am. She says she thinks it scarred me, and made me think I should make up for my condition by being nice, or something silly along those lines. My mother always assumed the worst, and seemed to take pleasure in overanalyzing me.

Maybe she was right, though. Maybe I was trying to compensate for my condition, even unconsciously.

And for not the first, nor the last time, I drew the curtains around my four-poster bed that evening feeling even guiltier about keeping this secret from my friends, wishing I could tell them… wishing I wasn't paranoid… wishing I could relieve my burden somewhat by just telling them what was haunting me… telling them where I went every month… stop lying to them.

But I could not. I would have to get used to lying if I wanted to stay in school and keep Dumbledore's trust. I _couldn't_ lose his trust... not now. His trust meant everything to me. It gave me a somewhat normal life... it gave me friends, and that was everything I could have ever dreamed of.

I slipped beneath the covers, wincing as a recent slash on my abdomen burned painfully against the fabric of my pajamas, feeling a dead weight somewhere behind my rib cage that seemed to be a solid block of guilt overpowering my heart. As tears started to well and I swallowed them back, I was hit again with my paranoia and self-disgust, and sweat myself into a nervous wreck before at last drifting off to an uneasy sleep.


	9. Suspicions at Christmas

**A/N:** S'more drama for poor little Remus. In this chapter, his friends are getting more suspicious, and James finally confronts him, while each still deals with his own drama: Sirius with his family angst, and James with his drama with Lily. I love drama, what can I say? ;)

* * *

The possibility of going home for Christmas was a very difficult quandary for me: going home would mean returning to full moons that I was used to, while staying at school meant having friends, but being in more severe pain for several days. The new environment, I think, was what was making my transformations hurt so much. 

I honestly didn't know what to say when Professor McGonagall approached us with a piece of parchment, questioning us about who would be staying at Hogwarts over the holidays.

"We all are," James said immediately, before the rest of us could even open our mouths. "Right?" he confirmed, turning to us. Sirius simply grinned, leaning back in his chair, while Peter laughed. I, however, did not respond.

"Mr. Potter," sighed McGonagall in exasperation, "your friends have tongues. They can speak for themselves, can't they?" Her eyes lingered on me, and I caught her gaze. I shrugged, and she squinted at me over her spectacles.

"They can," James told her haughtily, "but I already know that they're all staying."

"Is that so?" She still stared at me, pointedly.

I still was unsure as to whether or not staying here was a good idea, but as I felt James', Sirius', and Peter's eyes all on me, I was suddenly comforted, and felt that being with friends certainly compensated for a few days of pain. I found myself smiling serenely, and was brought suddenly down to earth when McGonagall called my name sharply. "Very well, but Mr. Lupin, I do need a word with you."

"What for?" Sirius inquired for me.

"It's okay," I told him, while he, James, and Peter raised their eyebrows at me. "I need to talk to her... about my schedule."

At this, I followed McGonagall to the other side of the common room, which was deserted. I found myself being oddly nervous, and wondering what she might need to talk to me about. Was this about Christmas? Was she about to tell me I had to go home for the holidays because it was part of the provisions laid down by Dumbledore? "So, Mr. Lupin, I just wanted to warn you," she said, lowering her voice hurriedly, "that this month's full moon is on Christmas."

My heart sank. I could think of nothing to say to this but, "Oh." Inside, I was screaming. I would not be able to spend Christmas with my friends, or with my family either, even if I _did_ chose to go home. It wasn't fair. My life was once again being obstructed by the nature of my being, and it just wasn't fair. The little things in life that I missed out on as a werewolf are often taken advantage of by many, and I wonder what it would be like to have a life in which I could take advantage of those things. The small things, like being able to have a picnic under a full moon, or share a holiday with family and friends, or go to school without having to be watched carefully by all the adults…

Lost in my thoughts, I only vaguely heard McGonagall's warning that my absence from the Christmas feast would probably not go unnoticed, with such a small number of students remaining at the castle. I could only shrug. When she asked me if I was sure I wanted that attention, I could only nod. I wanted to be with my friends too badly to go home, weak, defeated.

As she stalked off, I returned to my friends, who glared at me, questioning with their suspicious eyes. I shrugged to them as well, and quickly lied that she had wanted to give me a message from home, and ask me about my latest piece of homework.

"You mean that essay about Switching Spells?" Peter squeaked anxiously. "Oh, I think I failed that."

"Nah," I told him. "It was pretty easy. I'm sure you did fine."

A wave of gratefulness to my friends swept over me. It was one I had felt many times before, every time they began speaking of something that would bring me our of my dark thoughts. Once again, they were working their magic as they began to discuss Transfiguration in worried tones, wondering if they had gotten this or that right on this or that homework.

* * *

To none of our delight, both Severus Snape and Lily Evans were staying at Hogwarts over the break, too. The Gryffindor common room was much emptier, which was nice, except for the fact that Lily Evans now had more room to spread out and be disapproving of my friends and their procrastinating habits. She didn't seem to be too bothered by me, and I assumed it was because I was studious like she was, but I still didn't like her much. I didn't care much for those who scoffed so obviously at my friends. I was very protective of them, and didn't much appreciate her looking down upon them as though they were scum. 

On our first night of quiet from the rest of Gryffindor house, the four of us were sitting in large armchairs by the fire comfortably, and I grinned calmly to myself as I watched them talking animatedly about ways to curse Mrs. Norris.

"I'm sure she'd be easily finished off by a simple hex," Sirius was saying conversationally, sitting back serenely, scratching his chin in thought.

"Or," Peter chimed in, excitedly, "maybe we should just hex Filch. He deserves it more than Mrs. Norris does!"

"We're not stupid," said James with a snort. "We wouldn't actually attack any _people_, Peter, you git."

Peter scowled. "But he deserves it!" he said defiantly. "He tried to give me detention the other day for tripping in the hallway and knocking over one of those suits of armor." He crossed his arms in anger.

"Well," said Sirius, "he may be awful, but we're not about to just go around hexing people… unless they attack us first, right?" He laughed his barking laugh.

Peter's face suddenly brightened. "What if we cursed Mrs. Norris right in front of him? He'd go mad!" He laughed, gaining an odd glint in his eye that made the rest of us laugh at him.

"We'd get in such trouble for that," James said seriously. "Nah, we'd have to hex her when no one was watching."

"_Potter_," hissed a girl's voice suddenly from behind us. We all swiveled in our seats to see Lily Evans glaring menacingly at James, who stood, and bowed, mockingly.

"Evans," he replied in a falsely polite voice, "what brings you to us on what _was_ a lovely evening until _you_ interrupted it?" He smirked as he looked at her, glaring at him still from behind her curtain of curly red hair.

Her dazzlingly green eyes were full of revulsion as she looked at him, and her mouth was twisted in what she seemed to be a forced smile as she said, "I couldn't help overhearing your conversation, and…"

"I bet you could," James mumbled under his breath.

Lily, however, seemed to either not notice, or not care, for she went on. "…you wouldn't really attack Mrs. Norris, would you?"

"I donno," James said with a shrug and a laugh. "We might if she really bothered us enough some day."

"But how could you be so _cruel_?" Lily cried. It was obviously a cat lover whose voice was now cracking as she said, "Mrs. Norris is only a _kitten_! How could you hex an innocent _kitten_? Do you not have a _heart_?" She seemed nearly in tears.

James was rolling his eyes. "A cat lover, I'm guessing?" he asked her.

"Yes I am," she said furiously. "And so what? Is there a problem with the fact that I don't like cursing innocent kittens?"

"Not at all," James said, his voice still unconcerned and mock-sweet. "So why don't you go away, and spend some time with your precious Mrs. Norris instead of talking to us?"

Lily gave an indignant noise as she continued to glare at James. "You are absolutely unbe_liev_able, Potter," she said, her voice dangerously low, her eyes flashing and her nostrils flaring like an angered bull. I was sensing danger, but didn't know how to convey it to James as he continued to push the bickering.

"_I'm_ unbelievable? Look who's talking! _You're_ the one who's so annoying that you haven't got any friends but a slimy, good-for-nothing _Slytherin_!"

She looked as though she had been slapped in the face. I knew, then, that James had finally gone too far. He had clearly struck an unknown nerve, telling her she had no friends.

Lily's eyes shone, but her face stayed set and dark as she said, her voice shaking, "At least he's not a big-headed, insensitive, arrogant, rude prat like _you_."

At this, she turned to go. I leapt to my feet and put a hand on James' shoulder to stop him as he opened his mouth to continue arguing about Snape, but I knew things had to stop. James was going too far, now. It was a pointless battle that had begun for nothing, and had to end. "Leave it, James," I told him soothingly as Lily's long red hair whipped out of sight up the girls' dormitory.

The four of us were all alone now. Sirius and Peter were silent while James still stood, clearly in a temper, panting. His shoulders rose and fell dramatically with each heavy breath. I shook my head at him. "James," I told him, "why are you so rude to Lily?"

"I am not," he growled. "Well, I mean…" he instinctively ran his hand through his already untidy hair before finishing with, "she just bothers me for some reason."

"Yeah, well," Sirius barked, speaking at last, "she is an annoying know-it-all, so I can see why you don't like her, but I've got to agree with Remus on this one." He stood, too, and threw his arms around James' shoulders from behind, crushing my hand. I said nothing, but pulled it back as Peter stood to join us. "Seriously, James," Sirius went on, "you do act like a prat to her."

James shrugged us off and left for bed in a huff, leaving the three of us remaining alone beside the dying embers of the fireplace.

"D'you think James has a thing for Evans?" Sirius asked, his lips twitching, trying not to smile after his best friend's pathetic drama.

"Clearly," Peter and I said in unison.

* * *

Christmas came all too soon. Although I'd always enjoyed Christmas most of my life, I found myself practically dreading this one. 

Still, I did not regret my decision to stay in the castle over break. At the same time, though, I couldn't help being nervous about the questions I was sure to receive when the day came.

And so the morning of the 25th of December, I awoke feeling woozy, and knew immediately why. I had not been looking forward to this… having to leave my friends to celebrate the holiday without me. I had lain awake most of the night, attempting to cook up a lie to get me off today. When morning came, however, I found myself jerking to my senses, without a lie to show for all the thinking I had done, which had only ended in my drifting off to restless sleep.

And still, though a sudden pounding headache was being caused by my anxious thoughts, James' cry of "Wake up, you guys! There are presents!" managed to reach me, even in my miserable state. I sat up wearily, still sleepy and bleary-eyed, and looked around.

"Excellent," Sirius was saying excitedly. I watched him and the others bolt out of bed and begin to tear apart many parcels at the foot of each boy's own bed. Sirius snorted disdainfully as he looked at a single package angrily. "My mother's sent me something," he said nonchalantly.

"Well, what is it?" James asked through a mouthful of chocolates I had bought him. It was what I had given all of them. I wasn't one for particularly intimate gifts.

"Don't know, don't care," Sirius mumbled, throwing the unopened box over his shoulder, and letting it slide beneath his bed where it lay forgotten. "Have you got anything interesting from your parents, any of you?" Sirius asked the room as he began to rip open a lumpy package from James, which turned out to be a funny hat.

Peter squeaked. "Oh, my mum's sent me a sneak-o-scope!" His face was bright as he showed it to us.

"Cool," James agreed as he took a package from his own pile. "This one's from my parents," he said, excitement in his tone as he unwrapped it. "It's… _wow_!"

Sirius was gaping. I, who had been yawning and not paying much attention to what it was, finally looked over with interest. I let my jaw drop. "It's a… oh my goodness, James!" I gave a low whistle, impressed. "Those are so _rare_!" I told him.

Indeed, the cloak James had unwrapped was silvery, and looked almost like fluid made fabric as he held it up. I knew at once what was so special about it: this was unmistakably an Invisibility Cloak.

"Wow," gasped Peter, his face stricken with awe.

"Where did your parents ever get one of them?" Sirius demanded, striding over to his friend to look over his shoulder at the note that had come with the magnificent cloak.

"It was apparently my dad's," James laughed, his eyes flying across the small paper. "Ha! He tells me not to get into trouble when I get here, and now he gives me _this_, and says he used to use it all the time to steal food and stuff. That hypocrite…" James snorted with laughter. "Well, I'll be damned if I don't put this baby to good use!" he exclaimed proudly.

"Here, here!" Sirius cheered with glee. He and James were immediately in deep conversation about all the good things they could do now that they had an Invisibility Cloak on their side. Mrs. Norris' name came up once more, and I turned away from them.

Peter, too, began ignoring the others. He climbed onto my bed which I had slipped off so that I might bend at last over my very small pile of gifts. I searched through my pile. I had gotten something from each of my three friends, and one thing from Lily Evans. I left those, untouched, only opening the thin box I had received from my parents.

It was a book: a blank notebook.

"Well that's boring," Peter said, looking at the notebook that I had then thrown uninterestedly on my bed beside him. "It looks useful, though," he shrugged, flipping through the pages. "It's got little sections with dates on every day for the new year, like a day planner. Oh, and look! It's got a cute little lunar chart in the back." He looked down at me on the floor, and I, up at him. "Blimey," he said excitedly, "this could be useful in Astronomy, y'know." Then he laughed. "Other than that, though, I don't know that a lunar chart would really come in handy." I stood once more, and took a seat on my bed beside Peter, taking the small notebook from his hands. I turned to the back and saw the chart there: my mother had circled every full moon for the coming year. The sight made my heart sank.

I knew my mother only wanted to be helpful, but it felt like she was waving my condition in my face, tormenting me. I shut my eyes tightly as I closed the little book with a sharp snap. My chest was constricting, and my own mind was suddenly laughing at me as I was reminded once more of what I was: a slave to the way the world turns… a slave to the clouds that hide the moon from the world on most nights… a slave to the moon when it was showing in full, at which point this disguise would melt away, and my beating heart would then reside in the form it truly belongs to: that of a beast of evil.

Peter's voice dragged me graciously out of my dark thoughts. "Hey, Remus," he was saying, leaping to his feet. "I'm starving, let's go down to breakfast."

"Yeah," Sirius agreed, turning away from James at last. "I am, too. Let's go."

We all stood. My legs felt like lead… of perhaps they felt hollow. I couldn't decide. It was difficult to walk, either way, for my knees were stiff, and cracked with every step I took to follow my friends.

* * *

I defiantly refused the little voice in the back of my voice telling me to go to the hospital wing before the beast began to come alive inside of me. Even by the very late afternoon, at which point my stomach was churning and my blood boiling, I still had not gone to Madame Pomfrey. I was point blank refusing to abandon this day of happiness and enjoyment. It just wasn't fair to me that I should have to, so I simply… didn't. 

It had been a nice day, though snowy and cold, but at this point of the afternoon, the wind had grown so strong and chilly that no one dared go outside.

And now, while Sirius and Peter sat in a corner chatting animatedly about something, James and I played chess. I was usually much better at it than this, but I couldn't concentrate. I was feeling ill. The world outside was very dark, and I was starting to feel the approaching moon's effects, despite the fact that it was only the afternoon. I really should have been making my way to the hospital wing, but I was still defying the moon as avidly as I could, mustering all my strength to raise a shaking hand and move my castle.

James moved his knight, and I was trapped. "Check mate," James said cautiously, glaring at me from over his glasses. "Remus, mate, are you okay?"

I nodded, but he continued to stare. Shrugging, I told him in a cracking voice, "I think I might be getting sick again, but I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."

"If you say so," he replied, but did not look convinced. His suspicious look did not vanish, and I was starting to be able to smell the worry emanating from my friend. The smell of James' sweat caught in my nostrils, and it was thick with emotions: mirth that he had just beat me at chess for the first time ever, worry, and pity, all in one whiff. It was disgusting.

"Your pity is making me sick," I snarled as my head pounded viciously with these confusing smells.

"My… _what_?" James asked, taken aback. "What on earth is up with you?" He looked extremely affronted, and glared at me further, bewildered, suspicious, and worried.

"Never mind," I growled, standing and limping away from him.

"Hey! Remus! What about the feast?" James was calling after me. I ignored him.

I didn't get very far, however. My legs were aching, and my heart racing, so I could hardly reach the other side of the common room before I collapsed, weak, into an armchair.

I barely noticed that I had just intruded upon a tiny group of gossiping girls, among who was Lily Evans. The girls looks suddenly shocked at my pallor, and began asking me hurriedly if I was alright. I ignored them, wiping my forehead with my sleeve, wincing as my muscles ached with the movement.

Suddenly, a hand tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped and glanced at the person through watering eyes. It was Lily. She had been among the girls I had invaded. Her eyes were shining with worry, and the pity I had smelt from James was reeking from her as well. A much stronger scent was emanating from her, however. Her lips moved, but I did not hear her: I was too distracted by the scent of blood. It was a distinctly female scent that was mingled with an enticing blood smell, and it made something horrible in my chest begin to awaken, stirring hungrily.

"You're bleeding," I told her automatically, in a shaking voice, hardly even noticing that this was not the usual thing that one says in normal conversation. I hardly even heard myself speak, for my heart was throbbing too loudly in my ears now.

Lily looked at me curiously. I strained to listen to her when she opened her mouth, and heard her say defensively, "No I'm not!" She rubbed her lower stomach impulsively. I could smell her fear. The nervousness was plain on her face anyway, so I wasn't really intruding on her feelings.

"You are," I told her matter-of-factly, shrugging.

She was so taken aback that I had a moment to push her aside while she was distracted, and stand once more. My knees shook, but I had to leave. I needed Madame Pomfrey now. It was too much. I was starting to smell people, and grow hungry for them. I was becoming a danger. I shook as I walked, but I had to keep moving. As I pushed open the portrait hole, however, a voice sounded from behind me.

"Remus! Wait!"

I spun round to face James, who had followed me. I turned my back on him, and clambered out of the common room silently, hoping he would take the hint that he shouldn't continue to follow.

He didn't.

I was starting to pant. My blood knew it was growing dark. Why hadn't I listened to it earlier? Why hadn't I left more time for myself?

"This… is not a good time, James," I snapped coldly.

"You're not acting like yourself, James, and it's scaring me and the others."

"Deal with it," I told him irritably.

"Are you sick _again_?" He asked me, looking sympathetic.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes," I was forced to say. "So I really need to get to the hospital wing, now."

"Then let me go with you," he said defiantly, pleading, "the way any friend would!"

"_NO_!" I shouted.

"Why not?" he demanded heatedly, catching my shoulder as I made to keep limping away from him.

"_Because_," I said lamely, with no other response. "Look, this isn't the time to talk about it, so stop trying to be a good friend, and just leave me the bloody hell alone."

"You've never sworn before," James pointed out. "Look, Remus, we're not stupid. We know something's up, and we want to help."

I stared at him. I knew he was being kind… knew he was a genuine friend, and that was something I'd never had before… but I was cranky, and running out of time.

"That's nice," I said quickly, "but I really need to go." I began to turn away from him, but he called for me again.

"Are you going to be okay?"

I stopped, sighing. I turned slowly to him, but had no answer to give. I just looked at him. I was really beginning to regret my stupidity, and wish that I had skipped the entire day, and spent it in the shack that was my safe house for transformations.

"Well?" he pressed. "Are you suffering from like some incurable disease, or something?"

I sighed again. "Something like that," I rasped.

Our eyes stayed locked for another minute, before a sudden shooting pain in my stomach reminded me of what I had to be doing.

With a twitch of my bottom lip, and a pain in my chest that had nothing to do with the darkening sky, I turned on my heel, and left James alone in the corridor.

He did not follow, this time, nor did he call after me. Each step was physical agony. I was in tears by the time I had reached the hospital wing, from both the pain of walking and from the pain of having to leave James alone, looking after me with those sympathetic eyes.

Madame Pomfrey was waiting for me. "You're cutting it extremely close," she scolded. "The moon is nearly up!"

I said nothing. She took my arm, and steered me out of the castle and onto the empty grounds. She conjured me a cloak before we stepped outside, even though I insisted that I didn't need one. It was piercingly cold outside, the wind burning my flesh as it hit my face, but I was so sweaty, and aching so much now that I barely really felt it.

After prodding the knot on the Whomping Willow, she left me to return to the school as I climbed into the hole, and began to hurry along the low-ceilinged pathway to my safe house.


	10. It's Perfectly Normal

**A/N:** You may read this chapter and go "WHOA, what a COMPLETE waste of my time. What an UNBELIEVABLY, UNNECESSARILY USELESS chapter," but I found it necessary to include. JKR includes the coming of age aspect of the HP books in a very specific way: Harry matures more mentally, learning how the world works, understanding what it means to be alone, the importance of love and friendship and all that.

I, however, feel that for many, a very important part of growing up is, indeed, the physical part of it, as awkward as it is.

So, in this chapter, TWO of our happy characters are starting to go through some changes physically, and neither are particularly happy about it.

Enjoy the uselessness!

* * *

The day subsequent to Christmas was hell to me. I refused to stay a whole day in the hospital wing like I had been doing for my previous transformations, and returned to the common room thankfully with no new scratches visible on my face. There was, however, a fairly painful cut that now ran along my arm, over my wrist, and onto my palm, but Madame Pomfrey was lucky enough to get it to close so that I wouldn't have to go around bleeding all day. Still, as with all werewolf bites, it could not be healed entirely. It had only just barely stopped bleeding, but I knew that it would fade quickly into a mere scar in another day, the way they always did.

I was not positive it was such a good idea to return to my friends. The doubt crept up the back of my neck the very moment I entered the common room, legs still sore and cracking from the previous night. At least I was in a better mood, but now I was nervous to see James, for after what had transpired last night: he would probably question me again after what I nearly had let slip, and I did not particularly want to be forced to explain myself.

But to my surprise, he didn't say a word about it. The three of them made a big to-do about how much they had missed me at the feast, and I immediately proceeded to tell them how upset I was I had to miss it, but that I had, indeed, been feeling too ill to eat. I thought, for a moment, that the three exchanged a significant look with each other, but it happened so quickly, I convinced myself that I had imagined it, not wanting to start being paranoid again.

We made our way to breakfast, and although they were perfectly cheerful, though soft with me because I still looked very ill, I knew they were suspicious. No matter how much I was about to deny it, the game was changing. They were going to figure it out sooner or later. They knew me well by now, and as they were very clever, I knew they'd slowly comprehend my frequent absences around a specific time of the month for what they really were.

The entire morning, I actually was feeling _really_ ill, and told them so, so that I might leave to get an antidote for my developing migraine and stomach ache from Madame Pomfrey.

"Back again?" Madame Pomfrey questioned, glaring at me critically when I appeared for the second time in two days at the door to the hospital wing.

"Yes," I told her dully, holding a hand to my throbbing temple. "I wondered if you had something for headaches and stomach aches."

She scoffed. "Of course I do," she said defensively, and as she left to retrieve whatever medicine she was about to give me, I noted her eyeing my scarred arm. I tugged at the end of my sleeve in an attempt to hide it.

Madame Pomfrey handed me a small bottle of potion, which I chugged eagerly. It didn't help.

"How do you feel?" she asked calmly.

"Not any better."

"Wait a minute and it will start to sink in," she told me, hurrying away.

I held my breath. Maybe she had something to make my nerves go away. Maybe… maybe she could help with my paranoia and anxiety.

"Madame Pomfrey?" I called, and she turned back to me.

"Yes, what is it now, Mr. Lupin?"

"Um…" I hesitated. "Do you think… d'you think you could do something about my nerves?"

She glared at me. "What exactly do you mean? What are you nervous about?"

"I don't know," I lied, "but my heart is beating unusually fast all the time, and I'm really scared that… Well, I'm just… scared," I finished lamely. During the few seconds in which she stared at me, I thought of something else to ask her. "Um, also…" I hurried, "I was wondering if you could tell me why… why my, um…" I whispered the next word: "_transformations_… are so painful recently." It was far-fetched, I knew, but it was worth a shot. I mean, if it were something serious, I should know. It's always better to be safe, than to be sorry, after all.

"Well first of all," Madame Pomfrey began slowly, walking down the isle between the two lanes of beds, me at her heals, "I do always have a good supply of Calming Draught, and I'll be welcome to give you a bottle. I suppose you, of all people, might need it." She narrowed her eyes at me, and that curious expression I knew so well, that could either be revulsion or pity, appeared upon her face again. I swallowed nervously, but said nothing until she finally answered my second question. "As for why it's more painful," she said, her voice low, "there could be several simple explanations, the most likely of which being that you are hitting puberty." Her mouth twitched, as though she were almost embarrassed for having to tell me this. I could feel my face grow hot, and looked away. I was only eleven! I didn't know anything about puberty or what was going to happen when I passed it, let alone how it might affect the ever-present beast inside me.

"So… is that normal for people like… me? During, uh…" I was unable to say the word.

"During puberty, transformations might be more painful, yes," she said straightforwardly.

"Oh," I found myself able to finally choke out. "I think I really need that Calming Thing now, please…" I told her in a shaking voice, as my heart started to beat faster, terrified at the prospect of puberty.

"Yes, right away," she said awkwardly. I could see her cheeks flush pink as she left to get the draught, and knew it was not often that she spoke of puberty to boys much.

She returned with a bottle of the Calming Draught, and handed it to me, before saying sympathetically, "There's nothing to be embarrassed about, Lupin. It's a perfectly normal thing for people to—"

"Thank you for the Calming Draught and the headache antidote, Madame Pomfrey," I said quickly, cutting her off. I didn't want to hear it. I left hurriedly, ignoring the affronted look on Madame Pomfrey's face as I shut the doors to the hospital wing abruptly behind me.

I took my time walking back to the Gryffindor common room. The only good thing about the meeting with Madame Pomfrey was that the terror of my suspicious friends that had been building within me all morning was pushed to the back of my mind; the downside was that they had been forced there to make room for even _more_ harrowing thoughts.

I had heard puberty spoken of before, but never this seriously. I mean… well, I knew that my voice would soon start changing and that… but no one had warned me about the pain. But then, I supposed, no one who had even spoke to me about puberty had been a werewolf.

Cursing myself avidly under my breath for being so different that now I was even forced to _mature_ differently, I found myself suddenly standing before the portrait of the Fat Lady which concealed our common room. I didn't really want to face my friends again, but I supposed I would have to, wouldn't I?

I sighed in a resigned sort of way, and gave the Fat Lady the password: "rabid rodents." Pushing it open, I was met with a shout from the other end of the room.

"There you are, Remus! We were worried!" called James, holding up a sandwich. "I brought you a little something because you were all sick like," he said with a chuckle.

"Thanks," I mumbled gratefully, taking the grilled cheese sandwich before sitting beside Peter on the couch across from James and Sirius.

Sirius looked strangely at me. "You feeling better, mate?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said monotonously. I didn't want to go into it with them.

Actually, my problem was that I desperately _did_ want to go into it with them, but I couldn't: I was too cowardly, just like Snape had assumed of me… too afraid of loneliness to risk being abandoned by those I had actually had the fortune of being able to call my friends.

"Um, excuse me… Remus… may I borrow you for a moment?" a girl's voice said cautiously. I turned to meet Lily Evans' green eyes, and was startled to see that they were filled with something that looked like despair. I had seen the girl angry before, that was true enough, but never so sad.

"Certainly," I told her, completely ignoring the protests and calls after us that my friends made as I stood to follow her to the other side of the common room.

When we were a good distance away from the prying eyes of James, Sirius, and Peter, I turned to her. She looked so sad, and so confused, and it scared me. "Lily," I asked her, "are you alright?"

Though Lily Evans was slightly taller than I, she seemed to be diminished in size by the absolutely heartbreaking look spread across her face. She took a deep breath, staring at me determinedly and said firmly, "I want to know how you knew I was bleeding?"

"What?" I asked, utterly bewildered.

Her bottom lip twitched. "Christmas," she stated blankly. "On Christmas… in the late afternoon, you sat down next to me, looking really ill, and when I asked you what was wrong you just told me I was bleeding, and when I protested, you just left. So…" She took another breath. "I want to know how it is that you could have known that for sure."

"I didn't," I said, still straining my memory. Thinking back to Christmas, it slowly came back to me, and my heart sank. I didn't quite know where the blood had been, but my heightened senses had smelled it on her. "I think I guessed." I informed her lamely.

"You guessed?" she asked, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "Somehow I doubt that."

"Well," I said, "maybe I just made it up."

"Well that's a pretty big coincidence, because you were right." She sighed sadly, biting her lip. "I was bleeding."

"Oh," I told her. I didn't see how it was such a big deal. Why couldn't she just accept the information that I might have decided to pull her leg a bit by telling her that she was bleeding, without any knowledge that she actually happened to be? It was just a bit of blood… honestly, what was making her so upset over it?

She sniffed. "Can I tell you something, Remus?"

Lily looked so depressed that I could hardly refuse. "Uh… sure," I stuttered.

"I don't really have any friends." She looked like she was about to burst into tears.

It was an intolerably awkward moment. What on _earth_ was she going on about, and why was she telling _me_ this? I hardly _knew_ this girl! I knew her to be a rather sweet girl with a short temper, who was quite good in classes and disliked James to a very extreme extent. I knew her name, knew that she was muggle-born, but otherwise, I didn't know a thing. And so, as she suddenly began to cry to me, clutching at her stomach, the awkwardness built so high that I could do absolutely nothing. I stood in silence, watching her cry, and watching her begin to mumble to herself about how everyone hated her and how she was fat and ugly and the like. Actually, I couldn't hear a word she was saying, but, making an educated guess on the fact that she's a girl, I had the feeling it was something along those lines.

Not having the faintest inkling of what to do, I decided to simply go with being the polite person I was, and try to be understanding of her. "No," I told her confidently. "You _do_ have friends. What about Severus Snape?"

She sniffed angrily. "Severus?" she choked. "Ha. He called me a mudblood the other day. He's not really a friend, he's just…" I watched her searching for the right way to describe her relationship with him. It seemed that she could find nothing, however, and finished with a shrug, tears still leaking down her freckled face.

"He called you a…?" I was in shock. I'd known Snape was a git, but enough of one to call someone a… well I didn't even want to _think_ the word, it was so insulting.

She nodded sadly. "See?" she asked, wiping her streaming nose on her long sleeve. "I'm a 'mudblood' just like he said, I don't belong here, and I haven't got any friends."

I didn't know what to say to this, but was spared the need to respond when she continued. "And it doesn't help that the Beatles just broke up in April," she added. I didn't bother to ask her who or what the Beatles were, and she spared me having to by continuing her rant.

"And also, I just recently…" then she stopped in mid sentence, turning away and blushing furiously from beneath the tears that stained her cheeks.

"You don't have to tell me," I warned her, slightly hoping she'd let me alone, yet very curious. "But I'm here for you," I decided to throw in as an afterthought, intrigued by her nervous smile, and pressed to say it by my conscience feeling so guilty for not being quite as polite as I expect myself to be.

She nodded, and looked back at me through her reddening, swollen eyes. Her lips twitched as though about to giggle as she whispered, "I just got… well… you know."

"No, I don't," I told her. What on earth was she on about?

"You told me I was bleeding the other day, and it scared me, because I was having a really bad stomach ache like I had never had before. I went to the bathroom, and it turned out that I _was_ bleeding…"

I was still confused. I thought we had already gotten passed that, and decided it had been a coincidence! I looked blankly at her, and she finally rolled her eyes and finished, "I was bleeding in a way that only _girls_ can…"

And then it hit me. "OH," I exclaimed rather loudly. She looked wide-eyed at me as my face suddenly contorted in amusement. "Well," I said, suddenly feeling much more comfortable around this girl, "you're not the only one going through changes." I smiled, feeling the awkward-Remus slip away to be replaced by my regular, considerate one. "Don't feel like you're alone," I soothed as she smiled gratefully at me, "because you're not. I mean, I'm not a girl, but I can imagine it must be a tough thing to go through, and everybody does, so don't feel like you're alone."

"Thanks, Remus," she sighed, blinking back more tears that were welling. She suddenly laughed. "You must think I'm so weird," she uttered softly under her breath, wiping her eyes with the backs of both hands. "I mean, I don't know you and you don't know me, but here I am spilling my guts out for you."

"No," I said confidently, though I wasn't entirely certain I meant it, "I don't think that at all." I patted her shoulder in an attempt to be comforting. "You're going through some changes, and I guess… well, I guess seeing as I coincidentally told you what was happening before you even knew it, I suppose I was the first person you thought to come to. And really, I don't mind at all. I'm always here if you need me to be." She looked at me so warmly that it was almost scary.

"Thank you," she said again. She sounded as though she truly meant it. "You're so good at talking to people, y'know that?" she laughed.

"Mm," was all I could think to say in response, though I gave a sincere grinned, and shrugged bashfully.

Lily suddenly stuck out her hand for me to shake it. I did. "Thank you once again, Remus," she sighed, "I am extremely glad to find someone quite as understanding as you in Hogwarts."

"We're rare," I stated with a smirk.

She rolled her eyes, waved her hand in goodbye at me, and hurried off, blushing.

I returned to the other boys then, whose intrusive glares had not faded. "What did she want?" James shot at me the moment I approached.

Flopping back down beside Peter, I told them, "Nothing. She just wanted to talk to me."

"Why was she crying?" Peter asked, glaring at me.

"She's…" I paused for a moment, selecting a good way to word it. "She's feeling a bit… _moody_, and I'm just an easy person to talk to, so…"

"So she decided to make you her shoulder to cry on?" James pressed. I rolled my eyes at him in annoyance, but couldn't help being quite softened by James' constant jealousy of anyone who went near her.

I sighed. "I suppose so, but she doesn't interest me much." It was the truth. As nice as Lily Evans was, I had no interest in particularly pursuing any sort of friendship with her. I could be there for her as a decent human being would be for any other person going through a difficult time, but I still did find her rather wearing at times, so could probably never manage to survive a friendship with her.

This seemed to greatly ease James' mind. His face brightened, and he asked me happily, "So, Remus, are you going to eat that sandwich you've got there, or am I?"

I had completely forgotten about the bread still clutched between my fingers. The grease of it had rubbed off on them, and I put it down hastily to wipe my fingertips on my robes quickly before I picked it back up and began to eat the slightly stale grilled cheese sandwich.

As James was stating that girls at this age were too easily upset, I discretely slipped myself a swig of Calming Draught.

I supposed then that everyone does go through puberty at some point, and as odd as it is, they all go through it differently. Sitting so happily with my friends once more made my differences seem almost trivial to me, and I was able to just ignore my feelings of loneliness as we all laughed in agreement with James.

My thoughts of being different escaped me as I sat there: I had another whole month to be free to be human before my pain would so sadly return.


	11. Oh, for the Love of Cluelessness!

**A/N:** I'd like to apologize IMMENSELY for my lack of updates on ANYTHING. I've FINALLY managed to get SOMETHING done, though, so here it is! I've just been SO BUSY with the college stuff. I'm starting to decide what colleges I want, and what to put in my portfolio, and all that good stuff... it's kinda stressful, and so I'm REALLY sorry, but I can't be updating my fanfiction too much. I just don't have the time, otherwise I'd be writing 24/7!! I finally have chapter 11 here, though, so... yay! Enjoy!!

* * *

My conversation with Lily Evans turned out to have a beneficial impact. Lily had begun to smile at me in the corridors, and she even helped me during classes. She was not about to back down when the two of us knew the answer to a question, but she was at least forgiving if I got it right before she did. I could tell that such courtesy was new behavior for her; after all, she was still having difficulty being friendly to most people who were not me or Snape.

Despite the fact that Snape had insulted Lily, she was still polite to him. She and Snape certainly seemed friendly enough with one another that any onlooker would think them the best of friends. Weeks later, this fact had still not yet ceased to infuriate James. As a matter of fact, my increased contact with Lily Evans had made him reprimand me one night with the idea that I was "getting too close to our enemy."

"She's not our enemy," I said defensively from across the chessboard as one of his pawns wrestled one of mine.

"Anyone who threatens us by being a teachers' pet is definitely our enemy," he snarled.

I sent my queen after his pawn that had just easily defeated my sad ruin of one. "She's not threatening us," I said blankly.

"She is!" James cried indignantly. "You know that if we were to put a single toe out of line, she'd go running to McGonagall." He crossed his arms. "She's worse than those damned prefects."

I merely shrugged and turned back to the chess board. I stared as his queen checkmated my king. Moving my queen had gotten me into trouble.

James was right, of course. He was not right about Lily being our enemy, but he was right that her inane obsession with following rules could easily result in trouble for us if I let her get too close as a friend. My friends' love of _breaking_ rules made a friendship with such a girl nearly impossible. Still, I had no particular attachment to the girl, so it didn't make much of a difference. Besides, I was not about to simply stop being kind to Lily just because James told me to. He should have been glad I was becoming friends with her; after all, James had a crush on her. He should have been viewing my friendship with Lily a way to get closer to her. James, however, was not quite that optimistic.

"Whatever," I sighed. "I'm not going to stop being friendly with her. She feels alone, and that's not a good feeling." I swallowed. "When you're alone, it helps to have someone who understands, and that's what I am to her: someone who understands. If you would take the time to be more sensitive toward her, maybe she'd want to get close to you as well. That would make you happy, wouldn't it?"

He ignored most of my speech, and merely remarked, "You're not alone!" He stood. "You have us!" Peter and Sirius nodded adamantly from behind him.

"I know," I said. "I know."

A moment of silence lingered between the four of us as James cleaned up the game from between us. After a minute, he stopped, and let his hands go limp and his face go slack with sympathy. "Listen," he said in a voice full of concern that seemed extremely out of context, "Tell us what's been going on with you. Why are you always getting sick?"

"I'm just a sickly person, I guess," I said quickly, getting to my feet as well.

"Oh, come on, Remus," Sirius said. "We all agree that you must be hiding something. _No one_ gets ill that often… at least not ill enough that you have to leave school so much!"

"Yeah," Peter squeaked. His eyebrows were raised and his eyes were wide, clearly showing his nervousness at speaking up on this issue. He continued bravely anyway: "You get sick so much, I'm starting to think you're dying."

"I'm not dying," was all I could say.

"So then there is something you're hiding?" James questioned.

I was starting to sweat. "Can we please not talk about this?"

"Come on, Remus!" Peter squealed. "We're your friends! You can tell us."

"I would really prefer it if we just dropped this," I said, my voice now starting to shake.

"Please, Remus," James cooed. "We just want to help you."

What harm would really come of telling them?

"I…" escaped my throat, but nothing else came out. My brain was working in overdrive: if I told them I was a werewolf, they would abandon me like all my childhood friends had; if I told them, they would hate me the way everyone else did. I couldn't tell them. I just couldn't do it.

"I can't," finally fell from my lips.

"Why not?" Sirius pestered. "We're your friends, and…"

"I know all that, okay, Sirius? Just… drop it, guys. Alright?"

They fell silent. Perhaps my tone had been harsher than it was meant to be. "I'm sorry, but I just… I can't," I told them.

They were very quiet, but looked resigned to accept that I couldn't talk about it.

"Okay," James said submissively. "I'm sorry I started talking about it."

"I second that," said Sirius apologetically. "I'm sorry too."

"Me too," Peter sighed.

I looked at the group with an awkward smile. "It's okay," I told them. "Really: Thanks for understanding."

"We try, man," Sirius said with a grin and a slap on my shoulder. The air was lightened, and the tension that had been hovering there a moment ago ebbed away. Sirius was good at doing that. I smiled appreciatively at him, and laughed.

* * *

New Years had passed uneventfully. January came and went, and as the full moon rose the one night, late in the month, I told my friends a dramatic tale about how my father was in St. Mungo's for having an owl fly into his head and somehow manage to attach itself to his ear. The days of my absence were met with suspicion as usual, but my return was greeted with relief and sympathy. The three sets of eyes upon me made the guilt only increase, as they bore into me as though they knew my secret. It is the power of a true friend, I suppose, that is able somehow to make a person feel like admitting the baggage buried in the very deepest, darkest of corners in their mind.

February began, and tension rose as the end of the second week neared. February 14th was not to be highly regarded, but Professor Dumbledore certainly seemed bouncy on the day.

"Happy Valentines Day, my good boy," he said, his bright blue eyes twinkling at me. I smiled in return as he passed me to take his seat at the teachers' table in the front of the Great Hall. James, Peter, Sirius, and I made our way to the Gryffindor table hastily, to escape the squealing members of excited couples lunging at one another in the aisles.

I took my seat to James' right with Sirius to his left, and Peter across us. As the four of us began to pile fresh porridge onto our plates, a bush of red hair fell into view as Lily Evans sat beside me. She nudged my shoulder with her own in a friendly hello, and we smiled at one another. James scowled.

"Happy Valentines Day, you lot," she said sweetly as she poured herself a glass of pumpkin juice.

Sirius, Peter, and I replied "Happy Valentines Day" in return, but James merely grunted. Sirius snorted with laughter into his glass as he took a swig, simultaneously thumping James on the back with his other hand. James lurched at this, and his rounded glasses managed their way into his porridge somehow, and James groped blindly for a few minutes without aid as he struggled to return them to his face. Sirius and Peter were beside themselves with laughter, while Lily and I held our tongues despite our obvious amusement.

"I hate you guys," James remarked when he had wiped his lenses clean and placed them back on his nose. "I really, really do. I hate the lot of you— _viciously_."

I rumpled his hair, and Lily giggled from my right. I looked over at her in time to catch a faint blush in her cheeks as she watched James scowling in a disgruntled sort of way, his dark hair even more of a mess than it had been. "Don't kill him," she said.

I found myself no longer the only one looking at her in awe. The four of us stared openly at her. Sirius was the only one who had enough nerve to stop gawking long enough to say: "When did you start caring about what we do to James?" The rest of us nodded in agreement. James didn't move. He seemed to have shrunk slightly.

"I…" Lily was lost for words, I could tell. "I am not…" Her mouth twisted fervently as she searched for something to say. It was like watching a machine starting up, or a balloon very slowly being filled with air. Finally, she burst out with: "Oh, for crying out loud! Is it impossible for a girl to just be friendly every once in a while?" At that, she pushed herself to a standing position, and stormed off furiously, her hands balled into fists.

"Well, blimey," Sirius said breathlessly. "Did I say something?"

"No," I told him comfortingly. "She just has a problem with feeling like no one ever wants to be her friend, and I think your question just… well… added to that."

"But we were all thinking it!"

"I know," I told him. "It's not your fault."

I could tell that attempting to maintain a friendship with Lily would be difficult. She was unpredictable, and she had the temper anyone might expect from a redhead.

James reached across me, interrupting my thoughts. He pointed to Lily's plate, and raised an eyebrow at me. "D'you think she'd mind if I ate that?"

* * *

Professor Slughorn took Valentines Day deeply to heart. He handed out little heart-shaped cards to his favorite students. I was, sadly, among them, and flipped open the paper to find an invitation to a little holiday celebration in Slughorn's office. I folded it away in an inside pocket of my robes, and decided on the spot that I was most certainly not going to his stupid party.

Sirius and James amused themselves by pretending to vomit into their cauldrons as Slughorn bounced merrily around the classroom in robes far too brightly colored to even be allowed in the potions' dungeons. His round cheeks were shiny and red. We giggled silently at one another, for it was clear that the professor had drunk a bit too much fire whiskey. We could see a half empty bottle of it on his desk, sitting in plain view of all the students.

Most of the girls in the classroom were giggling airily. A majority of them were openly staring at Sirius, and laughing a bit too loudly whenever he did something stupid.

"What is wrong with the female population today?" He said, completely bewildered as a pretty girl with dark hair and glasses dropped a jar of some foul smelling liquid right by our table, blushing furiously at Sirius.

I sighed. "Beats me," I told him, though I had a pretty good idea. Even at such a young age, everyone could tell that Sirius was attractive. His dark hair fell rather handsomely in his eyes in a charming and mysterious sort of way, and it was—in Lily's words—"endearing." Lily may have hated Sirius, but it didn't stop her from having eyes, and Lily tended to say these kinds of things rather outwardly to me.

"Excuse me, Professor Slughorn," someone said meekly from the door. It was Professor McGonagall. The entire classroom looked up, astounded to see her down in the dungeons. What struck them all as odd was that she didn't seem quite as composed as usual. In fact, her eyes looked soft and tired, and her lips trembled as she scanned the room.

Slughorn looked at her curiously. "Yes, Professor, what is it?" he asked, seeming quite as confused as everyone else.

"It's nothing that needs to be announced," she said, her voice cracking. "May I have Mr. McLaggen, and his sister, too, please?"

Professor Slughorn looked taken aback, but he allowed her to summon his students out into the hallway despite the confusion plastered on his face. The girl who'd been bent beside our table wiping potions materials from the floor suddenly stood, looking frightened. She dropped her rag from her shaking hand, and it slapped wetly on the stone floor where it fell. It splashed my leg as it hit the ground, and I swooped down to retrieve it for her when she returned. The poor girl looked utterly terrified as she followed her brother, Tiberius, from the room.

The entire dungeon buzzed with the silence that filled it once the door had clanked shut. My ears were strained, as everyone else's were, listening for what McGonagall was telling the pair.

Everyone waited with bated breath. What was going on? A faint squeal could be heard. The girl was crying: "No, no, no! You're lying! Tell me you're lying to me!" McGonagall's frantic attempts to cheer her up were muffled by the girl's sobs.

The siblings did not return to the class. I clung to the dirty rag, protecting it, my heart breaking silently for the girl I did not know.


	12. The Terror Begins

**A/N:** Sorry for the lack of updates. School is over, finally, so I have time again. This chapter's been written for several weeks, now, but I haven't gotten to posting it. I just wrote chapter 13, though, so I'll be posting that real soon, too. Enjoy, for whoever is still bothering to read this damned story!

* * *

Weeks passed before I was informed of what had happened to the McLaggen twins. For the longest time, I had politely attempted to hold my curiosity inside, though others around me had not. People stared openly at them, and whispered behind their hands. Several times I'd had the urge to ask what they knew, and why they were making sympathetic faces at them, even though they'd never spoken to either sibling in their life. I never did. I kept my desire to know locked away, until another several incidents began to overpower the next few weeks, and my friends and I all cracked with the curiosity. 

During the first week of March, the fourth incident pushed me to start asking questions. A Hufflepuff boy was pulled out of Herbology by Dumbledore himself. The entire class hushed immediately as the grave looking headmaster brought the boy all the way up to the castle. No one concentrated for the rest of the lesson, and the boy never came back.

"What's been going on, recently?" I finally asked of the others once we were back in the common room. "Tell me I'm not imagining the outrageous number of people getting pulled from classes to be told who knows what. Tell me that's not just me…"

"It's not," Sirius said solemnly. "Everyone's noticed it."

"Well what's been happening?" I pressed. "Do any of you know what happened to the McLaggens? What about that Lawrence boy, and that seventh year Ravenclaw boy with the glasses? Or that dark skinned fifth year girl from our house?"

Sirius shook his head. James shrugged. Peter, however, squeaked and rubbed his neck anxiously.

I turned to him. "Do you know something, Peter?"

He bit his lip. "No… well, I just overheard something… about the McLaggens, but I don't know about anyone else. I'm just assuming they're all connected, so maybe something similar happened to them, too, but…"

"Get on with it, Peter!" James pushed. "And why didn't you tell us this the minute you overheard it?"

"Well I only heard it yesterday, while I was in the bathroom, and I forgot about it until just now!" he said defensively. "All I heard was that apparently the McLaggens' father was found murdered." His brow creased with sorrow. I listened to Sirius let out a breath of despair beside me.

James sighed. "Wow," he said. "So you think that people are getting murdered left and right, and that's why everyone keeps being pulled out of class?"

Out of absolutely no where, it seemed, Lily leaned across me to respond. "Well, actually, if you'd been reading the Daily Prophet you'd have known that the number of murders in the wizarding world within the past couple of months has gone up drastically. It's been a big topic of mystery in the paper, recently."

"Is that so?" James asked, not looking at her.

"It is," she continued enthusiastically. "The Ministry of Magic has apparently been going crazy trying to figure out the connections between all the murders, but there don't seem to be any. Apparently they think there's some crazed mass murderer out there who is killing at random, like a sport." Lily's face was flushed with excitement.

"Why do you always know everything?" James asked to the ceiling, though his question was so obviously directed towards Lily.

Lily's eyes narrowed, and her expression suddenly changed from enthusiasm to annoyance. "I do not always know everything," she said angrily. "I just care about what's going on in the world."

"Yeah, sure," James said sarcastically as Sirius, Peter and I all looked at each other meaningfully—we could tell this was about to explode in James' face. "Yeah, you care about what's going on in the world you're not even a part of. You're a muggle born and you care that much about our world? I don't buy it. You're just obsessed with knowing too much, that's all."

A horrible, stunned silence rang in everyone's ears as James seemed to realize just how cruel he was being, and his cheeks went pink while Lily's entire face became the same flaming red as her hair. Her lips parted soundlessly, shocked into speechlessness by his words, and then she quickly closed the gap once more.

She stood and left, saying nothing.

I fought the urge to follow and comfort her, for I could tell by her angry stride that she would probably not appreciate it very much at the moment. I instead turned back to my friends with an incredulous look at James. Peter's eyes were popping, but Sirius and James were both expressionless. James quickly returned to the subject at hand, not leaving much time to dwell on my disapproval of his treatment of Lily.

"So, you think that's true?" James questioned. His eyes were suddenly full of interest again. "D'you think it's all one killer?"

Sirius shrugged. "There's no way to know, I guess," he said heavily, lounging back into the large armchair he was stationed in.

"Let's just hope the Ministry can do its job properly and find out," Peter chimed in, his voice high and nervous.

"Yes, let's," I agreed.

Days went by, and the castle grew more and more tense. The Daily Prophet became strewn with reports of various murders of known muggle-born supporters, and the theory that a dangerous rebel of a wizard was prowling the streets now. As the number of deaths rose, and the level of danger increased so suddenly, it became impossible to ignore.

My birthday soon came and went, and I spoke of it to no one. I did not want attention, nor did I need it on that day, which had unfortunately been another full moon. I informed my friends that my mother was ill in Saint Mungo's, and had to visit her for a couple of days. They swallowed my lie as usual, though not without suspicion—as usual. I grew steadily guiltier, as usual, when I returned on March 12th to find my friends asking for a report on my mother's health, their eyes narrowed and their brows creased with disbelief when I told them she was doing better. As the time went by, I could not suppress the belief that they somehow knew of my condition.

* * *

April approached without much event, ignoring the increase in the number of deaths throughout the wizarding world. 

The Daily Prophet was extremely on edge: it was clear. The Hogwarts air, too, was thick with anxiety and confusion. Teachers seemed wild, disgruntled, and confused wherever we looked.

The people whose parents or family members had been killed became suddenly victims of attention that would have been my deepest fear. They were gawked at in the hallways, and hands pointed at them wherever they went. People were constantly approaching them with questions: Are you okay? What happened, exactly? Do you know the details? Who do you think did it? Did you see it coming?

In one instance, I looked up from an armload of books I was checking out of the library to see the McLaggen girl being bombarded with questions about her father. Her dark hair shadowed her face, but I could tell she was in tears as a third year Ravenclaw boy discussed openly who he thought might be behind it all.

Out of pure frustration with the extent to which these poor students were being victimized, I stomped over to where they sat—weighed down with my pile of books—and dumped my heavy load onto the table before them. They both looked up. The older boy seemed entirely unperturbed by the girl's tears and obvious resentment to his questions, but she looked up at me with gratitude in her eyes as my loud arrival made him cease his talking. "Sorry," I said, gesturing to the girl as I spoke to the Ravenclaw boy, "but I need to speak to her, alone. Do you mind?"

The boy shrugged, and stood. He patted the McLaggen girl on the shoulder, and stalked off haughtily. I sat beside the girl awkwardly. I was silent, and she was surprisingly the first to speak.

"Thanks," she said. "He was bothering me."

"I could tell," I told her with an honest smile.

She blushed. I twiddled my thumbs in my lap, unseen under the table. I realized then, that my kind gestures were always what got me into these awkward situations in which I never know what to say or do.

"I'm Alice," she said suddenly.

"Oh," I said, terrified of this unprecedented introduction. "I'm Remus."

"Well, thanks, Remus," she whispered. "It's impossible to get any peace in this school, not when gossip travels so fast."

I nodded. "Yeah," I uttered quietly in agreement.

After a few more awkward moments, I said my goodbyes and left, fleeing the scene quickly to return to the common room with all my acquired books.

It was well into May before the subject of Alice's father or the dead family members of others finally died down as a topic of discussion. The mysterious deaths had been turned over so many times in the heads of every student that it left very little to still be debated.

On one very warm night near the commencement of June, however, James and Sirius were playing cards at the end of Peter's bed, when the subject was brought up among us once again.

"Did you see the paper today, you guys?" Peter squealed with fright from where he sat curled upon his pillow. I glanced up with interest as I sat watching the card game from my bed beside Peter's.

Sirius chuckled. "No," he stated, his lazy voice sounding amused at the question. "There's no need to read it anymore. It always says the same thing, now, what with this murderer on the loose."

Peter gave a terrified gulp and shook his head. "Not today, Sirius. It wasn't just murders in the paper, today." Both Sirius and James looked up from their cards. "There was an attack on a nearby village where a whole bunch of muggle-born wizards were living. This was last night. Several whole families were killed, and… I think the number was… eleven people went missing without a trace. Other than those eleven, it was like the entire village was just dead, except for a few survivors, who told the whole story to the Daily Prophet. Apparently they were, like, completely mad with shock and trauma."

James, Sirius, and I were staring at Peter in awe, captured by his every word. As the four of us sat in silence for a moment, James shivered. "Well?" he urged of Peter, his voice thick with curiosity. "Did the survivors see who did it?"

Peter nodded, his face twisted with embarrassment at having three people focus so intently on him. "Yeah," he replied softly. "Apparently it was a big group of people, like an army invasion, all wearing black robes and creepy masks."

"And no one was caught?" Sirius demanded.

"No," he said sadly.

"God damn it," James whispered, slamming his fist upon Peter's bed, and hardly noticing as his cards bounced into disarray. "Why haven't they bloody caught anyone yet?"

"It's really torturing me," Sirius said furiously. "They'd better catch someone bloody soon, or I'll have to go out there and find someone to blame myself!"

I gave my friends a soft smile as I told them, "Oh, please, mind your language, and don't do anything rash, Sirius."

"Me? Why would I ever do anything rash?" He stuck out his tongue at me, and I simply raised my eyebrows at him in response, which hurt, due to the recently acquired scratch there. My transformations were getting more and more painful, and I seemed more and more prone to injuries as they continued this way.

"Anyway," James piped up, "let's not talk about that anymore, shall we?"

"Indeed," Peter squeaked nervously, his voice quivering in terror of the topic.

Sirius shrugged, and sighed in frustration as he stood and made his way over to his own bed. James scrambled upon his own bed, too, in turn, and in the midst of all the fumbling to get comfortable, I couldn't help but give a grunt of pain as I crawled beneath my sheets. A gash on my calf made it painful to move, but I had to keep up appearances. Still, even through the searing physical pain, my thoughts were focused upon the terrible events of yesterday which I had not been privy to until just now. My mind suddenly throbbed with this new information.

"Good night, all," Sirius said aloud to the silence, breaking my occupied thoughts. As all the lights went out, my tiredness brought the approaching end-of-term exams to the font of my brain.

Peter's snores were already filling the room, but my heart suddenly leapt with excitement as I remembered this. "Have any of you studied for exams, yet?" I called to the still night silence as I stared at the ceiling in the dark.

"Shut up, Remus," Sirius and James commanded in unison.

I chuckled once, rolled over, and was later surprised to find how quickly my disturbed mind drifted into sleep that night.


	13. Terror Ensues while School Concludes

**A/N:** Remus's first year finishes at last, but this is not the end!

* * *

As it was, exams were as easy as I could have dreamed they would be. Transfiguration was fairly simple, though my box still had the title of the book it had once been stamped across the front. My potions exam was incredibly easy, despite how much I had worried. Our class came to the conclusion, at the end of the exam, that Professor Slughorn wanted to give us a break, because even those who were terrible at the subject, like Peter, managed to find it unbearably simple. All else, I was certain I passed marvelously, and I found myself at last able to relax.

It was, however, difficult to relax when gossip had once again started up around the school about the attack that had taken place in late May. Yet another attack put the wizarding world into a state of extreme panic. Another wizarding community was ambushed, and several pure bloods from the area had come forward with the information that a dark man in robes and a mask had given them the choice to join his army.

Terror had struck Hogwarts. As the end of June approached, students all around the castle could be seen giving thanks that they could soon return home where they knew it would be safe.

The last day of school seemed to ignite such happiness within the students that those of us who had grown quite attached to the place found it almost offensive.

"You'd think they'd all realize," Lily told James, Sirius, Peter and I on the Hogwarts Express, "that Hogwarts is supposed to be the safest place around."

"Yeah," James agreed, "but have you noticed lately that even Dumbledore seems to be losing his cool?"

It was true: Dumbledore was hardly seen around the castle anymore, and it became rare for him to attend a meal. When he did bless the school with his presence, it was clear that he looked nervous, sad, and tired, as though he had suffered a truly great loss of some sort.

"That doesn't make him any less powerful," she replied confidently. James merely shrugged doubtfully in response. "Fine, think what you will, but I have faith in Professor Dumbledore, and in this school, as well, so I know we're safe, even if you refuse to believe we are." With a great, dramatic sniff and flip of her long, red hair, she stood, and fled our compartment.

James sat back comfortably, once she'd gone. "It seems unbelievable to me that we're really going back home," he sighed.

My heart clenched. I couldn't bear to remind myself that I was leaving the only friends I had ever had. Tears were starting to cloud my vision already, and it wasn't fair.

"I know," Sirius agreed sadly, gazing sadly out of the window and onto the blurred colors and shapes of the countryside.

"I'll be so sad to leave you guys," Peter declared. "You guys are my best friends."

The tears were blinding, now, but I swallowed them back to agree with Peter. "You three really are the only friends I've ever had," I pronounced, voicing at last my feelings of my months at Hogwarts. "You guys made my time at school bearable, y'know. I could never have gotten through it without you lot."

"Aw, now, don't get all mushy on us, Remus," Sirius barked amusedly with a lazy wave of his hand.

"Won't you tell us what you've been hiding from us all this time, now, Remus?" James asked desperately. "Tell us," he said. "Please?"

The silence that engulfed the compartment was gripping as three sets of eyes lay fixedly upon my nervous face. The mechanics of the train worked steadily around us, and I listened to the beat of my heart begin to fall in tune with the rhythmic clanking. I gazed back at my friends, and found myself falling slowly into their desperately concerned expressions as though some outer wall protecting my emotions had broken down and collapsed. I was giving in. I found my mouth open, and my tongue beginning to form the words I needed to say, but I caught myself. I glared out the window. Still, the others were silent. They were waiting for me. They continued to watch me as I stared, contemplative, at the trees speeding by beyond the glass. No harm could come of telling them now, could it? Hadn't they proved themselves my loyal friends? I knew them well, now: Were they really the type of people to run at the word "werewolf?"

They were loyal friends. They were not the type to be afraid. No hard could come of telling them, at last, my secret.

"I'm, uh…" I began. I expected annoying words to press me forward, but none came. They were silently letting me speak, at my own pace.

For this, I was grateful.

I took a deep breath. "I'm a werewolf," I told them blatantly. That was it. I had said it. There was no turning back anymore. My stomach was twisted furiously in a knot that made me nearly sick. I could not breathe. My head was spinning. I avoided their gaze, imagining their sudden looks of horror, shock, fear…

"Well, it sure took you long enough," Sirius's stated, shocking me.

I turned back to them, my heart frozen in disbelief. Their expressions of concern melted into those of relief and sympathy. James was sporting a wide smile that seemed to scrunch his entire face, leaving his eyes warm and squinty behind his round wire-framed glasses. Sirius was grinning and shaking his head at me, as though he was repressing a laugh, and Peter was just chuckling to himself.

"We knew, mate," Sirius said calmly. "We figured it out quite a while back. We were just hoping you'd come clean long before now."

"Why didn't you tell us outright?" James asked sympathetically.

"You had us thinking you were dying, for a while there. We were really worried!" Peter exclaimed.

James sighed, and clapped me on the shoulder with a laugh at my stunned expression. It seems impossible to describe my feelings then. My relief and my love for them seemed to mingle and become the most brilliant and elated feeling in the world. To be accepted… it is the most chillingly beautiful feeling I know I've ever experienced.

"We're glad you told us, Remus," James said. I felt his comforting, warm hand upon my shoulder, and realized then, with a genuine smile, that I had three friends who I could really count on to be there for me.

As I left my friends to greet my parents at King's Cross station, I felt tears flood my face once more.

"We'll all write to each other, yeah?" James called to me as I departed to my parents.

I nodded back at him as he found his family. Peter scrambled off to his mother with a wave back at us, and I watched Sirius sadly drag his own trunk off to the sour looking woman who was his mother. I saw his younger brother stick his tongue out at him as he approached, and kick him once he'd reached them, and felt stabs of sympathy as his mother simply walked ahead of them, indifferent to their squabbles.

My parents were very soon dragging me from the station. Tears in my eyes, I left the station feeling more complete than I had even been. Finding friendship made me whole, and made me realize that the world was, in fact, full of people who cared.

These friendships I'd formed over the year made me realize that I was not alone, nor would I ever be again.


	14. To Godric's Hollow

**A/N:** Oh boy. It's nice to be back on this story. I've been so focused on my DG fic "The Affair," that I haven't been paying any of my other fics the attention I meant to! I'm playing favorites! Bad Jessabeth, bad! Nyehehehe. Anyway. Here's chapter fourteen at last. Yay, yay, yay, and more yay.

ENJOY, MY DARLINGS!! AND PLEASE REVIEW! LOVE TO YOU ALL!

* * *

July's full moon came with angry pain as usual. The chains seemed to hurt more than I remembered as the vivid faces of my friends that so helped me through this time while I was at school made their way to the front of my mind, taunting me.

I awoke the following morning with a splitting headache, and aching muscles, but relief washed over me to realize I'd survived another full moon, as it always did each month. My mother's calming hands released me from my restraints, and showed me back upstairs. She sat me down at the kitchen table, and began to pile food upon my plate. I watched the window eagerly. At least once a week I received a letter from each of my three friends. Today, I prayed for more from them, my insides still squirming as an aftermath of my transformation.

A wonderful sensation overtook me at the sight of two small, black dots gliding towards our house. I helped myself to a mouthful of waffles as the owls perched themselves delicately upon the kitchen windowsill. My mother removed the parcels from the owls' legs, and handed them to me with a glint in her eye and a kind smile. She was glad I had made friends at school.

Unfolding the first letter, I found it to be from James. His scrawl was messy, but the sight of it warmed me.

_Dear Remus,_

_I noticed that last night was a full moon, and I couldn't resist writing to you: How was it? Was it really painful? Are you okay?_

_Sirius is here, and he says hello. We're both worried about you after last night. We don't know much about werewolf transformation, but from what we read, they're painful, so we got worried. _

_Anyway, you're invited here, too. You'd better come, or I'll be upset. Oh, Sirius will be too, he says. We miss you. Oh, and don't worry about August's full moon, because we have a basement where you can lock yourself up if you've got to. Don't worry about it, like I know you will. _

_You'd better come! Peter's invited, as well._

_Love, James and Sirius_

The second parcel, I realized, was not from one of my friends, but a newspaper for my mother. She seemed not to have noticed as she made herself a plate of waffles as well, so I unrolled the paper for her. I took one quick glance at the front page, and nearly choked.

**UNNAMED KILLER REVEALED: DARK 'LORD VOLDEMORT' COMMITTING MASS MURDER FOR 'BLOOD PURITY.'**

I didn't bother to read the article, but merely handed the paper to my mother, who gasped. "Oh my," she said, "Oh my, oh my… this can't be good." She clapped her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering. "When people start claiming that they're doing what they're doing for 'blood purity,' you know to steer clear."

"Definitely," I agreed softly. I watched my mother scanning the article, and her eyes grew wider with every line.

She sighed, discarding the paper with shaking hands. "So, this unnamed killer who has been taking over _the Prophet_ all year finally has a name. Apparently witnesses saw this guy murder an entire street full of muggles, and heard him referred to by his hooded followers as their 'Lord Voldemort.' It's pathetic, the ridiculous sorts of names these dark wizards give themselves."

Nervous, I chewed my tongue. It was already bleeding—I had apparently bitten it last night during my change. I washed down the taste with another bite of pancake, and tried to push the nerve from my head. "Mum," I tried, "can I stay at my friend James' house for a month?"

"A month?" she echoed, seeming shocked. "But… Remus, what… what about your condition?"

"James said not to worry about it. He said he's got a basement for me to stay in that night."

She bit her lip. "Oh, Remus, I don't know if it's really a good idea."

"Mum, didn't you_ want_ me to get friends? Didn't you say it'd be good for me?"

"Oh… well, yes, Remus, I just…" She sighed. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I do, mum," I told her calmly with a warm smile.

Her reluctance was clearly battling with her desire to give me a life of acceptance. I watched her struggling with herself for a few minutes in silence, and then she said finally, "Then yes, you most certainly may go to your friend's house."

* * *

Several days later, I arrived in Godric's Hollow by Knight Bus with a stomach full of butterflies, for I was nervous to leave my home for an entire month when it was not to attend the well-organized school I loved so much. I had never visited the house of a friend, for I had never had friends with whom to visit before now. 

"Remus!" James cried at the sight of me upon his doorstep with my trunk on the ground behind me. He shook my hand enthusiastically, and I smiled warmly in return as my entire arm was wrung by his avid greeting.

"James," I stated happily, feeling alight with gladness at the sight of him, and of Sirius behind him "Sirius," I said. "It's so good to see you guys again!"

"Yeah, how's it going, mate?" Sirius asked as he flung his arms around me in a friendly hug.

I shrugged. "Alright."

"How was your July?" James questioned, stepping back to let me inside.

"It was fine," I informed him as I lifted my trunk by a side, and dragged it across the threshold, into the Potter's house.

"It must have been better than Sirius'," James laughed, clapping our friend on the back as he looked annoyed.

Sirius puffed out his chest angrily, his face brooding and annoyed. "My mother didn't take kindly to the fact that I was in Gryffindor. Her letters had been insulting enough, but coming home to her, my father, and my brother… it was torture."

"What did she do?" I asked, and my face was soft with concern.

He shrugged, throwing himself into one of the chairs at a table that stood in the middle of James' kitchen. "Well, she didn't use a lot of words, let's put it that way," he spat, pulling back his hair to reveal an angry purple bruise below his ear.

"Oh, God, Sirius! She can't do that!" I cried, pulling up the chair beside him and sitting in it, leaning close to him to examine the welt. "That's abuse."

"No, it's not. It is abuse if it happens a lot, but it doesn't," Sirius said nonchalantly, shrugging me off. "Usually she just yells a lot, but this time… well… she didn't talk to me all month, and finally I just came here without a word to her. Oh, I wrote to her once I was here," he added at the sight of my raised eyebrows, "but trust me, she wouldn't care anyway. She's so ashamed to have me as a son now, I don't think she'd mind if I ran away and never came back."

I was spared the need to say something consoling when James' mother entered the room at that very moment. "Oh, you must be Remus!" she said kindly, her smile wide and warm as she reached out to grasp my hand. Her dark hair was messy, like James', and her light eyes were hidden behind a pair of glasses just like the ones that James wore. Her husband entered behind her, and the resemblance he held to James was so striking, I was almost shocked to realize he was _not _James aged thirty years.

"Remus," the man said in a deep, rumbling voice, smiling James' smile. His eyes were twinkling sweetly.

I grinned awkwardly, and raised my hand in a slight wave. "Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Potter," I squeaked.

"It's so nice to have you here, Remus, dear. We've heard so much about you!" Mrs. Potter prattled. "Oh, and don't you worry about the 20th," she said sincerely. "We can lock you in the basement, and you'll be perfectly safe there, so don't…worry." She ended on an understanding grin. In response to the suddenly shocked look on my face, she said, "You're surprised we know? Of course we know."

"And… you don't mind?"

"Mind? Why should we mind? It isn't your fault! Werewolves get far more discrimination than they deserve. It's all just fear of the misunderstood that makes the public act the way it does toward people like you. We're not like that here, though, and don't feel awkward about it." She was smiling so affectionately that I was immediately quelled, and I smiled back.

"So," James said, pulling me to my feet and dragging me up the stairs to his bedroom while Sirius followed, "tell us about it."

"Tell you about what?"

Sirius gave me a light blow to the back of my head as James pushed me through his door. "About your transformations! What's it like?"

"Uh…" This was not what I'd been expecting. I did not answer, merely looking around James' bedroom with mild interest. The majority of the place was plastered in Quidditch posters. A bunk bed looked very out of place in James' cluttered room that was so clearly built for one.

James pointed at the bunk on the bottom. "That's yours," he said. "Sirius already claimed the top. My mum is going to conjure another cot for when Peter gets here. Oh, and we have something exciting to tell you when he does." He and Sirius exchanged a meaningful look, their smirks mischievous.

"What?"

"We can't tell you yet! It's a surprise for you," Sirius informed me excitedly, "but Peter's involved in it too, so we'll tell you when he's here."

"Okay…" I said slowly, attempting to repress my anxious curiosity.

James flopped onto his bed, and glared at me pointedly. "So," he said in a businesslike manner, "spill. What's the deal with these transformations?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because we're you're friends!" Sirius answered indignantly for his friend, who nodded in agreement.

I sighed. "You don't want to hear that…" I told them, attempting to sound normal. I had a feeling my anxiety was betrayed, however, because James' next words were kind, as though trying to lull me into feeling comfortable enough to tell them the horrific feeling of transforming into a werewolf.

"If we didn't want to hear it," he said quietly, "then we wouldn't ask. We only want to know because we care about you, Remus."

The genuine care in his and Sirius' eyes softened me, and I found myself willing to tell them. They had proven themselves my trustworthy friends, and if anyone deserved to know what it felt like, the people I felt closest to in the world certainly did.

I took a deep breath, thinking. I could feel their eyes on me as I walked around James' bed to sit with a squeak upon the bottom bunk that was apparently mine to sleep in. Sirius was sitting beside James on his bed, and the two of them stared at me as I glared fixedly at my hands in my lap, choosing my words carefully.

"Becoming a werewolf," I began quietly, "was incredibly painful. If you've ever had a chunk of your throat ripped out, you'll know what if feels like. The wolf was hiding just outside my house, in the woods that surround our yard, and it bit me…" I gestured to a scar at the base of my throat. James made a motion as though to gag, but when I looked up at him, he was still.

"I was five years old. Ever since then, once a month, I become nothing like what you see here." I looked back down at myself in disgust. If I was telling them this stuff, I felt I might as well have done the thing properly, so in emphasis of my story, I lifted my shirt. Their eyes were wide at my mutilated flesh, appalled, but I felt suddenly determined to make them understand. I lifted a pant leg, and Sirius' jaw dropped at the sight of the scab upon my thigh that was so freshly torn there. "That's what happens if I'm not chained up, but if I am chained, I feel more stressed in the morning. It's pretty much a choice between simple flesh wounds that will never heal entirely, or feeling trapped and stressed, like the wolf's still there, still waiting to get out, unsatisfied." I gulped, my eyes flitting between my friends' faces as I went on.

"Transforming is like nothing I can really describe. It's painful as heck, to put it lightly… like something's clawing at all your insides, breaking all your bones, and tearing off all your skin. I don't remember myself once I'm actually transformed, but apparently the creature I become is so violent, that without stuff to kill, I just rip myself apart to let out all my pent up violent energy. That's why I'm so scarred and stuff. It takes a long time to recuperate from a full moon, because, y'know, werewolf scratches and bites can't be healed fully. The day of it is painful too, like you feel nauseous and paranoid, because you can practically feel what's coming."

I swallowed again. "It's basically just… not a fun experience. But y'know what?"

"What?" Sirius choked, his voice sounding dry.

"It feels better when I know I have friends like you. I never had friends as a kid. You guys are the first people who have ever taken any kind of interest at all, and really been my friends."

Out of nowhere, it seemed, James stood, and threw his arms around my neck, embracing me like a long lost brother. Sirius joined him a moment later, and I was stunned. My two dearest friends were clinging to me like I was their life source. I could feel their heartbeats pumping next to me, and their faces buried in my shoulder, and the only reaction that occurred to me was to smile, and place my arms around them, as well.

Sirius sniffed into my shirt. "I grew up hearing all this crap stuff about how werewolves were like devils and whatnot, but I never believed a word of it. I actually thought it was kind of cool."

"Me too," James admitted, pulling back, "but my parents always told me they were to be pitied and treated like normal people, not hated and shunned."

"Well, it's a lot less cool than it sounds, and I really don't want pity," I laughed. "I'm a normal kid; I swear."

Sirius laughed, sitting back upright as well. "We know you are, Remus," he told me, punching me happily on the arm. "And I swear we'll defend your rights to normality until the day we die!"

I laughed out loud at this, my spirits so high I might have been floating, not sitting. "Thanks," I chuckled. "It means more to me than you can know. Really."

The three of us shared grins of understanding and brotherly affection before James' mother's voice hurdled through the door informing us that it was far too late to still be awake.

Still grinning to myself, I crawled into the bed prepared for me while Sirius leapt to the one above it. I rolled onto my side, hugging my knees, and sighed, feeling—for the first time in my memory—warm, whole, satisfied, and loved by friends I never thought I ever deserved.

* * *

Peter arrived the next morning looking just as small as I remembered, but slightly rounder. "Peter!" James cried, flinging an arm around him and welcoming him in. Sirius gave the boy a friendly smack on the shoulder, and ruffled his hair. 

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you guys," Peter squealed. "My summer has been so dull. I missed you!"

James' mother shuffled in to make him at home just as she had done for me, and the four of us was soon being ushered into chairs around the table in the kitchen to eat a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, and delicious buttered toast. It was all wonderful. James was quickest to finish, and was soon on his feet again, looking boisterous and excited. A wicked glint in his eye suggested he was up to no good, and when Sirius joined him and they began rushing me and Peter to hurry up, I knew that he wasn't.

Peter and I followed James and Sirius up the stairs and back into the messy room we were all to share that August. In the small amount of time that we had left the room, another cot had appeared on the other side of James' bed. Peter sat gratefully upon it, and I took my place on my own squeaky bunk. James stood before us, grinning manically, and Sirius was bouncing on his heels next to him. James cleared his throat.

"As you all know," he said, speaking as though he was addressing a large group of people gathered there for the intent of listening to him make a speech, "Remus, here, is a werewolf." Peter nodded, flashing me a happy smile, and Sirius beamed at me. I was blushing furiously, annoyance at James suddenly rising within me.

Sirius then spoke. "We've done some research," he said excitedly, "so we could find out ways to keep Remus as happy and comfortable as possible."

"And as it turns out," James continued for him, "werewolves are only a real threat to humans! Animals are safe around them." He was glowing, as though this was supposed to mean something to me and Peter, but the two of us merely looked at him curiously. "Don't you see?" he squeaked.

"Animals are safe!" Sirius went on. "Humans are not. If _we_ were animals, we could keep Remus company during the full moon."

I was beginning to catch on, and my face went suddenly rigid with disapproval as I glared at them.

Peter was fidgeting. "But we're _not_ animals! What exactly are you suggesting?"

A terrible gleam of mischief shone furiously in Sirius' eyes as he seemed to swell with pride and excitement.

"What I'm suggesting," he said in forced calm as his grin spread wider over his manic expression, "is that we become animagi."


	15. Transforming with Company

**A/N:** Oh my, this chapter bugs me. I don't like it. AT ALL. Ugh. Oh well. I'm just gonna get over it, and post it anyway. Woohoo. Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

"Absolutely not," was my immediate reaction. "I'm not about to let you lot put your lives in danger just to keep me company."

"Oh, please, our lives won't be in danger," James scoffed.

I got to my feet in a huff, feeling dizzy and nervous. How could they suggest something like that? "They will be! You don't know what I'm like when I'm…"

"We don't care!" Sirius shouted me down. "We want to make those times easier for you!"

"I'll be worried sick that you guys will get hurt! It won't be easier, it'll be even more stressful than it already is!"

"But animals are safe from werewolves." James had sat, but he still looked excited. "Come on, Remus, it'll be great!"

"Either way, it takes years to become an animagus!" I went on, trying to convince them of their stupidity. "And you've got to register with the ministry and everything!

Sirius' laugh was more a bark than anything. "There is such a thing as doing it _without_ registering. It's been done before."

"What exactly is an animagus?" Peter squeaked, looking frightened.

James sighed. "An animagus is someone who can turn into an animal at will."

"Oh," Peter sighed, looking ashamed that he hadn't caught onto this already.

"It's _not_ going to happen," I hissed, my hands unwillingly balling into fists. "I can't let you guys put yourself at risk like that!"

"Oh, come on," Sirius said with frustration, rolling his eyes. "We'll be careful!"

"I'm sure you would be," I pressed, "but I can't trust myself in that situation!"

"But we'll be animals," James reminded me, "not ourselves, either. We'll be in the right state to be safe around you, and even help you not hurt yourself." His eyes looked pained, and I could tell he was remembering the scars I had revealed to him last night. Before that, I had changed in the common room as subtly as possible, concealing the gashes I bore all over my body as best I could.

Silence held. I was at a loss for words. Perhaps it was because half of me was so touched by this proposal, and rather eager to let them do it. That part of me wanted them to do it, for it felt like too offer such a thing was to offer me a promise of eternal happiness and friendship. It was the ultimate sign of devotion, and I wanted it.

The other half of my mind was logical: "_Don't let them do it_!" it was screaming, but I was suddenly ignoring it.

"Do what you want," I told them gruffly, "just… be careful about it."

James whooped with mirth, punching a fist into the air. Sirius ruffled my hair and shook my hand madly as though it was the first time we had met. "This is going to be excellent," Sirius told me happily. "Right, guys?"

Peter was still looking confused. "So… we're going to teach ourselves how to transform into animals?"

"That's right, Peter!" James said with a laugh. "Good of you to catch on at last." Though Peter blushed furiously at this crack at his intelligence, he was smiling. Even I couldn't resist the grin itching at the corners of my lips.

I was still uncertain, but the bit of me that was rebellious seemed to have taken over, and it possessed me, making excitement build at the thought that I might never have to be alone again—not even during the full moon.

* * *

James and Sirius were eager to start this adventure right away. Already they were gathering books they thought might be useful and flipping through them excitedly. Much of the next few weeks were spent shut up in James' room, searching for helpful information about becoming animagi.

"It's not going to be easy," I reminded them on the night of the 18th of August. Tomorrow night was a full moon—my first away from home or Hogwarts, and I was very nervous about it.

Sirius laughed. "I know it won't be easy," he said, his eyes twinkling, "but it'll be worth it."

"But it can take years," I said for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few weeks.

"Then we'll work at it for years!" James snapped. "Stop trying to convince us not to do it, Remus. No matter what you say, we're going to. And it's all for you," he added, seeing the look on my face, "so stop complaining!"

"Yeah," Peter agreed, turning some pages in a book he was poring over.

I sighed. "Sorry," I grumbled. "I'm just kind of paranoid right now."

"Is it because the full moon is tomorrow?" James asked, looking almost delighted by the idea. I glared at him suspiciously.

"You really shouldn't be so keen on it," I said, my voice low and dangerous. "The way you talk about it, you'd think I become a cute furry animal once a month. I'm a monster," I spat. "Get used to it."

A moment of awkward silence hung over us all, until Peter finally squeaked, "It's really kind of late. Maybe we should go to bed?" and we parted to our separate beds.

* * *

The next morning I awoke with a violent headache. I groaned, turning over, a hand at my forehead, attempting to assuage it. "You alright, Remus?" James asked when he saw me. "You look terrible." 

I grunted in response. "Day of the full moon," was all I said. I noticed Sirius exchange an anxious look with James. They had never really thought about the true horribleness of my change until this moment, I could tell. This made me angry, and I growled involuntarily, pushing passed James, who had already stood. Sirius climbed down the bunk bed I had just left, jumping halfway down to land on his feet beside James. Peter was just rising, yawning.

"Morning, Remus!" he squeaked happily, getting out of bed. I did not respond.

The four of us left the room, and made our way downstairs. At the kitchen table, gleaming piles of bacon were already waiting for us. Mrs. Potter looked utterly delighted to see us enter. "Oh, good morning, all!" she said, waving her arms excitedly. While everyone else mumbled their good-mornings, I grunted, feeling oddly queasy as I stared at the bacon. "Remus," she said directly to me, "later today, I can show you our basement, and you can tell me if it's adequate. I could always make it more comfortable for you, if you want…"

"Don't worry about it, mum!" James said happily. "We can show him!" I felt grateful to hear this. It felt awkward to me to be shown the place I would transform by a woman I really didn't know well.

"Thank you, though," I told her kindly, and she smiled at me, her eyes shining with sympathy that I didn't want.

After breakfast, we ran back upstairs to get dressed. James and Sirius grabbed their broomsticks to have a fly around James' small yard behind his house, and Peter and I followed, choosing instead to sit on the sidelines and watch, chatting lazily about one thing or another. It took effort to stay focused on what he was saying about a recently discovered plant, for I didn't really care all that much, and my mind kept wandering to the growing aches in all my joints. I felt sore all over. I knew I must look pale, because soon Peter was telling me, "Wow, Remus, you look really awful."

"Thank you," I snapped, doubling over where I sat so as to ease the pain in my ribs. I breathed deeply.

Sirius and James landed beside us, and looked nervously at me. "Remus, should we, uh… show you the basement, now?" James asked cautiously.

"Uh…maybe that's a good idea," I agreed.

James led us down a flight of stairs in his house that led to a large, dark space. He clicked the dusty lamp on, and a dull light flooded the place. "This is all it is," he said, looking awkward.

I cleared my throat. "You might want to take out that lamp," I told him, pointing. "If I knock it over, I could start a fire." James looked terrified, but nodded.

"So," he said, "should we go back upstairs now?"

I shook my head. "You go," I told him. "I'm really not feeling well. I think I'll just…"

"If you're staying here," Sirius cut me off, looking stern, "then so are we. We'll stay with you 'till the moment you chance, you hear?"

"No," I snapped stubbornly. "I—"

"Oh, shut it," James hissed. "We're staying if you are. All afternoon, and all evening if we have to, no matter how restless we get."

"You're sure you don't just want to come back up with us, Remus?" Peter asked, sounding concerned.

I shook my head. "I don't… feel well…" And as though to prove my point, my knees gave in, and I fell to the floor, breathing deeply. "It… gets worse… as I get older," I panted. "Something to do with… puberty."

James actually laughed, though his expression was kind. "Aw, ickle Remus is becoming a man."

Sirius and Peter chuckled, and James was grinning broadly at me. Even I couldn't resist a slight smile. "You guys…" I breathed, "…are really great… y'know that?"

"Of course we are," Sirius said happily, joining James in dragging me to a wall that I could lean against. "We're the best there is."

"You are," I panted.

My three wonderful friends were true to their word. James left once during the late afternoon to retrieve a deck of cards so that he, Sirius, and Peter could entertain themselves while I slid in and out of consciousness. I watched them with a lazy smile on my face as I sat, feeling sore and tired. Occasionally one of them would look over at me, notice me watching them, and smile back. I had never felt more loved.

I had no way of keeping track of time then, and I felt too weak all afternoon to possibly get up and find a clock. How I managed through these days at school without going to the hospital wing, I couldn't figure out. My insides were churning, and my bones felt suddenly on fire. I let out a groan, doubling over, clutching the hard ground beneath me. "You okay, Remus?" James asked, his voice full of concern. I looked up at him.

"I'm…" I tried, but a choking sound escaped me instead of the rest of my sentence. My throat felt closed up, and I could feel every inch of me contorting, suddenly, with agony. I had fallen to the floor without realizing it.

"Remus!" Sirius barked, leaping to his feet. "What's…?"

Peter squeaked with fright. "You guys?" he said tentatively. I glanced up at him. He was looking at his watch anxiously. I knew what was happening.

Thrusting a shaking hand toward the door in an indistinct gesture, I tried to tell them to leave. They got the gist of it. "Remus," James said sadly as they backed away from me, "if… if you need anything, we're…"

"_Out_," I hissed furiously, feeling it happen… feeling my bones shifting inside of me, and my fingernails elongating. If they didn't leave now…

"We're out, yes, you're right," Sirius said quickly, grabbing James by the back of his shirt and dragging him up the stairs. "Come on, James." Peter had already scampered, taking the only lamp with him, but James was hanging back, looking after me as though he had never seen anything like me before. My eyes were popping. I could smell him, and for the first time in my life, I felt what I had never wanted ever to feel: I wanted to kill James. His blood was fiercely tempting as it pulsed through his veins… so soft… so tender… so easy to tear open.

I thrashed about in agony and self-disgust, throwing myself toward the base of the stairs. He backed up then, staring at me as a sudden burst of pure anguishing torture shot through me, and I screamed. My lungs grew sore as my voice reached a deafening volume, but I couldn't help it; I was in too much pain.

"LET'S _GO_, JAMES," Sirius roared, finally yanking the boy unwillingly out of the basement. The door slammed loudly just as I gave a furious cry of agony and rage, and threw myself at the staircase's railing. The wood splintered in my grasp as I clutched it, and blood spilled down my changing hands and arms. My scream was strangled and painful as I crushed several steps easily, writhing about madly. I could feel my claws piercing my own skin as I clutched my sides in agony, and soon, I was gone, and nothingness overpowered the violent pain.

* * *

Morning came with soreness, stabbing pains, and the taste of blood in my mouth. The door to the basement opened with a loud slam. I was delirious. I had no strength to fully understand what was happening as anxious shrieks met my ears. I tried my best to return to sensible thought, and opened my eyes. 

"Oh god, no wonder he didn't let us see him right after a full moon."

"Wow… oh, poor Remus…"

"Remus? Can you hear us, Remus?"

The scared voices sounded far away. I could not move, but I looked up at the faces leaning over me. "Hi," I croaked, a tiny smile on my face as my friends' kindness came flooding back.

"Oh, Remus! You're okay!" Peter squealed happily, looking like he was resisting with all his might not to throw his arms around me. James looked very white, and his face was terrified.

Sirius just beamed, his expression one of complete relief. "God, Remus," he said, "you really scared us, y'know?"

I gave a feeble laugh. "Well… I'm pretty scary on the full moon."

"You were screaming so much," James said, his voice trembling. "We were so worried." He looked absolutely horrified.

"That's normal," I said quietly, trying to push myself upright.

"God, I can't believe you go through that every single month," Peter said sadly, shaking his head.

Sirius handed me a pile of clothes, his face concerned. "So you really scream that much?" I nodded, and his brow creased in sympathy. "You sounded like you were being tortured. It was awful."

James cleared his throat. "I should, uh… call my mother in to heal you."

I gave a little groan in response, and shot him a kind smile. I could feel blood pouring sickeningly from a new cut across my cheek, and there was another on my shoulder. When he left, I closed my eyes, breathing deeply. It was definitely awkward to be lying here, completely naked, surrounded by my friends. At this thought, I ignored the pain to sit up at put on the pants Sirius had handed me. He and Peter were nice enough to help me, not making any jeering comments about the strangeness of the situation, like I knew they would have done if I wasn't a werewolf. Sirius' fingers traced the cut on my shoulder. "Wow," he whispered. "You really beat yourself up."

I gave a hollow laugh, lying back once my bottom half had been covered. "Yeah," I said weakly. "Are you still so sure you want to spend time around a thing that can do that, even if you would be animals?"

"Hey, 'that thing' is my friend, and I'll spend time with it if I want to." His smile was warm. "We're going to do it, Remus," he stated. "Stop convincing us otherwise."

At that moment, James returned, with his mother following behind him. "Oh, Remus," she said sadly, looking over the bleeding wounds. She knelt over me. I could feel the wounds closing up—bit by bit. Peter had to look away, for the process was slow. Werewolf-induced injuries never heal fully, so it always took a particularly long time to even just close up a single cut caused by one. A half an hour later, I had regained some strength as the gashed sewed themselves precariously back together.

"Congratulations," James told me with a weak smile when his mother had left, "you've survived another full moon."

"I can't believe… every month for the rest of your life?" Peter squeaked, sounding terrified. He was chewing his nails anxiously.

I grinned wryly. "Every month, forever."


End file.
